


Exceptional Circumstances

by manic_intent



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Dean Winchester, M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Slash, Wingfic, alternative universe, strange alien sexual circumstances, wingkink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-17
Updated: 2012-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:57:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 52,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean negotiates with Michael instead of outright refusing.  He has a year of borrowed angel mojo to set the world right.  Can't be hard... right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beingevil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beingevil/gifts).



> This fic was inspired by a twitter conversation with beingevil, in which we were discussing how Dean could have said 'yes' to Michael plus terms and conditions. After all, Michael only wants a license to occupy for a short time period...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean always has priorities. Really.

I.

"That's Dean, all right," Sam conceded. "Bobby, the first thing he did when he got all 'angeled up' was to hop over to Hoosier Mama's in Chicago for some banana cream pie. It's definitely Dean."

"S'good pie," Dean muttered defensively from the couch, curled over the paper box.

"I can't _believe_ this," Bobby growled, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen with his arms crossed over his chest. "After all this, you still go and say 'yes' to Michael? You bloody _idjit_."

"I didn't say yes to Michael," Dean corrected, if somewhat indistinctly. "Also, the first thing I did was detox Sammy. The _second_ thing I did was to get pie, while he was sleeping off the angel aspirin. I still got priorities, guys."

"You're both idjits," Bobby said, by way of response. "Why the fuck do I bother?"

"If you didn't say 'yes' to Michael'," Sam added flatly, "Then what?"

"Angel telephony," Dean tapped at his temple, then shovelled more cream pie into his mouth. "Michael got tired of waiting for results from his feathery douchebag minions and came to talk to me himself. It turns out that he's actually rather reasonable."

Sam threw up his hands. "So you _did_ do a deal with Michael! Dean, you just spent all this time bitching me out whenever I tried to get stronger, and _now_ you..."

"It's not the same as downing demon blood, Sam. I've got a year of being 'angeled up'," Dean cut in. "Michael told me that the Lucifer and Michael shakedown was the 'prescribed' ending, but not necessarily _the_ ending. Humans can make their own endings. That's the whole point, apparently, of being 'made in God's image'. It isn't the 'meatbag' look, it's our soul." 

Dean paused when he realized that Sam and Bobby were wearing identical what-the-fuck expressions, and grumbled, "Okay, I didn't really understand that either, but _moving along_ ," he added sharply, when Sam opened his mouth, "Think of this sort of like a trial period... thing. With no soul deals or addiction problems."

"Did you just negotiate some sort of... _hire-purchase_ deal with an _archangel_?" Sam demanded, incredulous.

"Not really, more like a license. Or a terms contract." Dean corrected, and at Sam's arched eyebrow, continued, "I met a _lot_ of lawyers in the Pit, you have no idea."

"How's this sort of deal even possible?"

"We can believe that an archangel can recreate the world into reality television but not sub-let his mojo to his True Vessel for a bit?"

Sam hesitated. "Okay. Maybe you've got a point there." 

" _Any way_ , Michael conceded that according to the Big Damn Script, the 'Righteous Man' gets to pick the ending, so he's just coming along for the show for now."

Sam scoffed. "Just like that?"

"Just like that," Dean nodded, and scooped himself another mouthful of pie.

"So he's not in your head right now?"

"Nope. Said he had better things to do right now." Michael had actually seemed vaguely relieved about the New Deal, as though he was taking some sort of pre-apocalypse vacation. It wouldn't be surprising; Dean had come away from the dream meeting with the impression that Michael had Dean's problem with Sammy, except massively magnified. Herding legions of douchebag siblings around, all of whom had nuclear abilities, probably got tiring after a few millennia.

"And what happens after the year?"

"If we're still shit out of luck, he takes over," Dean conceded, with a blithe wave of the spoon. "But hey, a year, right? And I'll be able to eat pie anytime, from anywhere."

Sam groaned. "That had _better_ not have been sold to you as one of the perks."

Dean assumed a hunted expression. Sometimes Sam made out like he was reading _minds_. "Uh. No?" he offered, just as Bobby rolled his eyes and growled, " _Balls_."

"So, um," Sam settled onto the couch and confiscated the pie, despite Dean's yelp and grabbing hands, "Be serious, Dean. If this was such a good thing, how come Cas ran off the moment you woke up, huh?"

"I don't know, maybe he needed some space? I don't know if you've noticed, but Cas isn't usually around unless we ask him to be." Dean gave up trying to retake his pie after some moments of abject indignity. Sam always had longer arms. "What's your point, Sam?"

"My point is that I'm not going to be convinced that what happened to you is a good thing until I hear it from Cas." Sam told him evenly. "My point is that the last time I saw you, you were... you weren't all _there_ , Dean, you haven't been all systems go for... well, since you came back, really. And now you're-"

"It's called finally getting somewhere, Sammy." Dean folded his arms. "We didn't have a lot of hope before. Now we've got a year's worth of breathing space and a new card up our sleeve."

"You think that he'd have learned about these kinda deals and how they turn out after the last one he did with the crossroads demon," Bobby muttered gruffly, stamping over to his desk to pour himself a shot of whisky. "Dean, you stupid bastard."

"Call Cas, Dean. Get him here. If he's fine with the new you, then I'm... I guess I'll be fine with it, too."

"Fine." Dean closed his eyes theatrically. "Castiel, get your feathery ass back down here and talk to me, amen." After an empty pause, he added, more cautiously, "Please? This is me asking nicely, Cas."

"Nothing." Sam always did like stating the obvious.

"I'll go find him." Dean pushed himself off the couch. "You can't have any of my pie. I'll be back."

II.

The lease/license/deal with Michael's powers was, Dean had to admit, pretty awesome. One moment he was sitting on Bobby's couch, and in the next, he was standing in some sort of hollowed out sandstone cave. Shafts of light fed in through the jagged squares of windows to his left and right, and pitted, broken slabs of gray stone were the remnants of what were probably once benches, lining a narrow walkway to a shattered stone altar.

Sitting on the largest piece of the altar with his elbows over his knees was Castiel, who looked very surprised to see him. "Dea... _Michael_ ," Castiel corrected, getting to his feet, eyes narrowed, fists clenched, like he was wavering between fighting or running off again.

"Uh no, it's still Dean. And you're staying here until we talk," Dean added, as the angel tensed up. "Or I'm just going to chase you around the universe until you get tired. This place is sort of... caveman chic, don't you think? Is this where you go when you're not with us? Because Bobby could totally lend you a room, man."

"This is where I come when I have questions." Castiel ran a palm briefly over a slanting slab of altar. "This cave is one of the first places of worship that was crafted by your kind. God has long since left his House, but I find the echoes soothing."

So it seemed that the angelic version of a security blanket was old churches. Not creepy at all. "Sam wants to know why you ran off."

"Because you gave in, Dean!" For a nerdy looking angel, Castiel could go from zero to all guns blazing in the blink of an eye, with added shock value. It was always like being savaged by a quiet fluffy animal, no matter how often it happened. The quiet ones were always the scary ones. "I've killed my brothers for you! I've rebelled from Heaven for you! I believed in you. And you _gave in_."

"Hey, hey, hold up for a sec," Dean raised his palms up. "Calm down, Cas. It's still me, isn't it?"

"I don't know why-"

"It's still me, isn't it?" Dean repeated, gently.

Castiel shot him a desperate look, then dropped his eyes. "Not entirely." 

"What do you mean, 'not entirely'? I'm still in the driver's seat, Cas. Just because I got my hands on some angel mojo doesn't mean that I'm now someone else, all right? We can work with this, Cas. I've got a whole year to myself, and I'm far stronger now. A year's a long time, and I've got some ideas about what to do next." 

The angel was still staring at his feet, and with a sigh, Dean took a step closer. "Cas..."

Instantly, Castiel shut his eyes, sucking in a tight breath. "Dean, could you... could you hide your wings? You are making me uncomfortable."

Dean looked over his shoulder at the wide expanse of nothing, puzzled, then back at Castiel. "Uh. Fine work on the humour front there, Cas, but I was trying to be serious."

"You have more than five senses now, Dean," Castiel muttered. "Fold your wings inwards."

"Cas, I really don't..." Dean hesitated, as he felt rather than saw a blur in reality over his shoulder, and as he concentrated, the blur seemed to coalesce slowly, like an image coming into focus, and abruptly, he could see them. A pair of _wings_. Insubstantial, and a pale gray, the span of each wider than the room, each beautifully formed pinion dipping into the floor, the wall. As he reached behind his shoulder to touch one of the feathers, he felt a faint electrical tingle, ticklish and not unpleasant. " _Awesome_. You mean these have been out the whole time?"

Castiel was... Castiel was _blushing_. "Yes, Dean. Fold them inwards."

"Um." Insubstantial muscles that he'd never had allowed him to pull the wings up, awkwardly, over his back, like the weirdest fucking cloak ever. "Like this?" 

Castiel didn't even open his eyes. "No."

It took some mental strain and experimentation, but eventually silently instructing the wings to go invisible and stay that way seemed to work. Castiel opened his eyes, looking relieved, as though Dean had been... "Cas, was that the angelic equivalent of flashing someone?" When Cas merely looked bewildered, Dean clarified, "You know, uh, whipping it out? Acts of indecent exposure?"

Castiel looked up, at the ceiling, but he was blushing again. "Ah. Well. You weren't to know."

"So," Dean added, mildly, "That first time we met, in the garage..."

"I had no choice! Neither of you were going to believe that I wasn't a demon." The angel looked agitated now, which wasn't much of an improvement. "I apologize."

Day one of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo-angel: heal brother, get pie, accidentally flash another angel. Hallelujah. Somehow, everything seemed like it was going as it always would have been. "No offense taken, man." Awkward. "So, um, you accept that I'm me, right?"

Castiel's eyes darted around the room as he shuffled his feet, then he exhaled loudly. "For now, yes."

"Great! Come back with me and repeat that to Sam. Everyone can stop freaking out, and we can concentrate on the end of the world." 

"I... I need a moment." Castiel was staring at his feet again. "I will follow you as soon as I am able."

"Hey, I'm good with the Angel Express now, Cas. If you're out of juice, I'll take us both." 

Castiel backed away hastily as Dean took another step forward, hand outraised, and stumbled over a rock to fall heavily against the wall. With a last, panicky look, he abruptly disappeared, with the usual sound of a flutter of wings, and with a sigh, Dean closed his eyes and concentrated.

This time, Castiel was on a white strip of a beach, on some sort of tropical island, the endless blue of the ocean melting into the sky in the horizon. "Stop following me, Dean!"

"Not until you tell me why you're acting like I'm some sort of monster!"

"Your wings are showing again, Dean." Castiel was facing the forest, his back resolutely to Dean. "You're meant to fold them each time you use them to fly."

Dean concentrated. "Fine. Happy now?"

"You're like a child with these powers. Michael would have known that. You can't face Lucifer as you are now. You can't even face any of the stronger demons. You'll waste your year, or worse, you'll hurt yourself, and then Michael will take over."

"Okay, so I need a teacher. I can learn, you can teach." 

Castiel sighed. "You were born human. You've always been human. You can't just pick up how to use Michael's powers the way you can pick up using one of your rudimentary projectile weapons."

"Me and my shotgun are hurt," Dean padded through the warm sand to Castiel's shoulder. "Look. Maybe I'm leaking angel mojo everywhere, or whatever it is that's freaking you out. But this is our best shot right now, and I intend to take it. So you can be Mister Miyagi for a while and teach me how to use this, or..."

"Or what, Dean?" Castiel glanced at him, jaw set.

"Or I guess I'll keep following you around and annoying you until you give in," Dean plastered on his best shit-eating grin, but Castiel merely scowled at him. "The deal's been made, Cas. You can be angry with me all you want. It doesn't change that I've already made my choice. I'm asking you to trust me on this one. I'm asking you to help me. Can you do that?"

Castiel glared at him, for a long moment, then he sighed again and looked away. "I will. I must."

"Good." Dean said, relieved. "Thanks. For everything." At Castiel's arched eyebrow, Dean added, somewhat self-consciously, "I mean, I guess I never got to tell you. Raising me from hell. Sticking with us all this way. Breaking ranks for us."

"It's called having faith, Dean. And I do have faith in you." Castiel watched the surf break on the beach, white froth flowing back towards the sea, then he set his shoulders. "I'll meet you back at Bobby's. I just need a moment to... absorb the change in circumstances."

"Okay, Cas." Dean could do that. "Well. Now that that's all over. Uh. See you later, then."

Let it be known that Dean Winchester could handle a chick flick, All-The-Feelings, I-Trust-You-Please-Trust-Me moment as well as anyone without coming off as being _too_ emotionally stunted. Relieved, Dean concentrated on moving himself back to Bobby's place.

Sam was finishing Dean's pie when Dean reappeared in the living room. "Whoah!"

"Oh, fuck you too," Dean glared. "That was _mine_."

"Cas didn't come?"

"Thank you, Captain Obvious." Dean settled into the couch. "He's occupied right now, and he'll come over when he can."

"Okay," Sam looked dubious. "In the meantime... Dean, when we spoke to Raphael, he shorted out the Eastern seaboard when he showed up. Where you're concerned, the lights and the house are still fine. Are you sure that you got all of Michael's powers?"

Dean shrugged. "Gabriel doesn't short out his bit of the world when he shows up. Maybe Raphael just likes to show off. Besides, it seems that I need training." 

Sam snorted. "Huh."

"What do you mean, 'huh'? And where's Bobby?"

"Bobby's in the scrap yard. Who's going to teach you?" 

"Cas, obviously. He's the only angel we've met so far other than pre-Terminator-Anna whom I haven't felt like punching out after five minutes of contact... what?"

Sam managed to stop laughing after his second attempt. "It's just funny, Dean. We used to have to teach Cas about the human world. People skills. Working the _television_ , even. And now he's going to teach you about being a not-angel. It's like the tables have turned."

"Yeah, well, it seems like they have protocol like you would not believe," Dean grumbled, tilting his head back to press his skull over the edge of the couch. "Anyway, I was thinking. Firstly, and obviously, Lucifer can be killed by one of those angel-killing swords. Lateral thinking - what are those swords made out of? Can they be made into shells and loaded into the Colt? Secondly, the last time a shakedown happened, Michael stuffed Lucifer into that cage. The cage's still there, maybe we can do it again."

"You were just 'thinking'?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, Dean," Sam murmured, then he smiled, if tentatively. "I guess hire-purchase deal with an archangel or not, it's good to have you back." 

"I've been back for _months_ ," Dean pointed out, but Sam only shook his head wryly and pushed himself to his feet.

III.

Castiel reappeared when Bobby had passed out asleep over his desk and Sam was beginning to nod off; Dean had already taken a few naps over the couch.

"Dean, your wings are showing," Castiel muttered, eyes again resolutely closed.

"His what?" Sam looked over sharply at Dean, then back at Castiel, and then mouthed, _I think Cas just made a joke._

"Long story, Sammy." Dean forced himself to concentrate. After a moment, Castiel visibly relaxed. "Okay, Cas. Tell him."

"Dean is still himself for now." Castiel stated woodenly. "It was still a reckless, foolish and unexpected decision, but I suppose that reckless, foolish and unexpected decisions are normal for Dean."

"Hey," Dean glowered, but Sam chuckled. "Feeling better, Cas?"

"No. But I accept Dean's judgment for now." 

Dean rolled his eyes, but Sam noted quickly, "Dean had some ideas while you were out." 

It seemed that melting down an angel-killing sword was out of the question - each angel apparently created their own blade, as an extension of themselves or something, and the blades were therefore by their nature only unmade when the angel fell or went nuclear. Castiel did, however, start to nod slowly at the possibility of re-using the cage.

"I know that you need the key," Castiel said, as Sam flipped tiredly through the latest book that he was going through. "Its form and existence however would only be known to the archangels. They forged the cage."

"You could ask Michael." Sam glanced at Dean.

"Yeah, about that," Dean coughed, "He's taking this self-determination thing very seriously. For the whole year, the only help I'm getting from him is the powers. Everything else is going to have to be by my own steam. Raphael's an asshole, so I guess the last one in the count is bloody Gabriel, who's so good at hiding from his brothers that I can't get a bead on him."

"I'll make enquiries about his whereabouts." Castiel volunteered. "According to what I've heard, he's found a way to resist responding to summons or scrying. But he's been on Earth long enough to have developed habits. There must be places in which he prefers to reside. We should be able to find him in one of them."

"Good. You do that." Dean agreed, and Castiel straightened up with a faint smile, though he didn't meet Dean's eyes, and disappeared with a sound of fluttering wings. 

"Whoah." Sam stared at him, wide-eyed. "Dean, did you do something to Cas?"

"What? Why do you ask?" Dean was _not_ about to explain the Wings Incident to his little brother. Even under torture.

"He just _smiled_."

"Angels are allowed to smile, Sammy. In fact, I think it was kinda meant to come with the job description," Dean pointed out dryly, and at Sam's skeptical glance, added, "What?"

"You're effectively an angel now, aren't you?" 

"Without the usual stick-up-my-ass attitude, sure."

"If you have Michael's powers, you're probably stronger than Cas now, yeah?"

"I guess." That was a funny thought to contemplate. Bringing Castiel along on hunts used to be equivalent to bringing out the big guns, what with the teleportation, mass smiting, super strength, spells and occasional time travel that summed up non-douchebag angelic usefulness. If he was stronger than Castiel now-

"Angels really, really seem to like following orders from stronger angels, don't they?" Sam continued, with his reserved Big-Brother-Is-Being-Stupid-On-Purpose expression.

Dean pressed a palm over his face. "Are you making this into a sex thing? Because I don't think that my brain can handle that. This is _Cas_ we're talking about, Sam. You know, the angel who got spooked when I took him into a brothel? They don't _do_ sex things." 

"Sure, Dean," Sam said dryly. "I mean, Cas has always firmly been in your fanclub, but that look he just got? It's like you asked him to be the Dean Fanclub President." 

"Aww, did _you_ want to be President, Sammy?" Dean smirked, just to see Sam roll his eyes at him and bury his nose back in the book. Seriously. The ideas that Sam got, sometimes. It had to have to do with his height. All that blood having to pump all the way up to his brain sometimes picked up some crazy on the way. Castiel was happier because they had a nice trump card now, that much was obvious. "I'm going to get more pie. I'm thinking the blueberry one from Square Meal, in New York."

"You know, some people might, when getting 'angeled up', do... other things," Sam suggested, without looking up.

"You mean, getting us some burgers instead while I'm at it?"

"I was referring to, I don't know, working miracles," Sam muttered. 

"Turn some water into a fifty-year-old Macallan?"

"...Never mind."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pies mentioned in this fic will be from [[serious eats](http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/03/best-pie-in-united-states-america-pi-pie-day-fruit-cream-slideshow.html)]. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean decides to test drive the smiting thing.

IV.

Day three of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo-angel: accidentally smite the ever-loving crap out of a couple of hellhounds, a demon and half a mile of abandoned rural real estate. Dean stared at his palms, blinking slowly, then at the smoking fan-shaped swathe of devastation in front of him, and whistled. "Holy shit."

"Don't blaspheme," Castiel rebuked him, although the angel was wide-eyed and seemed somewhat shaken. "Perhaps it should have been obvious to me from the beginning that your problem was not going to be being unable to use Michael's powers but having to learn some _self-control_."

"Blow me, I'm awesome."

"You nearly _killed me_ , Dean," Sam pointed out, having been standing even closer than Castiel to the blast radius when it had happened, and was clearly determined to be a girl about it all. 

"Just because your eyebrows are a little singed-"

"They shouldn't be singed at all!"

"-doesn't mean that this is a bad thing," Dean soldiered on, determined. "I mean, having too much whammy is better than having too little, right?" He winked at Castiel, who predictably, stared back at him blankly.

"He did not use Michael's full potential, Sam. If he had, we would both be dead."

Sam transferred his glare to the angel. "If that was you trying to be comforting, you still totally suck at it, Cas," he growled, as he picked his way out of twisted debris, heading towards the back of the ruined warehouse in a prissy snit. Princess.

"I was not attempting sympathy but stating a fact," Castiel murmured, clearly puzzled by Sam's outburst, then he seemed to shrug it off as yet another incomprehensible oddity of human behaviour. "You need to learn how to focus, Dean."

"Is this the bit where we both go and sit under a waterfall?"

"I fail to see how that would be of any assistance," Castiel frowned.

"It was a joke, Cas." All in all, despite the definitely _minor_ technical problems, Dean was definitely feeling good about the firepower. Far more confident, at least. And he could see hellhounds now, which, while it may or may not have been a plus had he still been fully Exhibit A: Squishy Human Chew Toy, seeing as they were fucking uglier than he imagined and with a hell of a lot more teeth, it was a definite plus when he could now blast them sky high with a mere thought. "How are you going on the Gabriel front? You didn't have to drop in. We would have called you if we needed the help."

"Gabriel has had a very long time to learn how to hide his signature." Castiel looked away quickly, and he shifted his weight on his feet. "And I... I wanted to observe your progress."

"Well, I'm fine, and I'll practice this focus thing, Great Teacher," Dean grinned broadly, clapping Castiel on the shoulder. "So why don't you get back to the archangel hunting?"

"Ah." Castiel murmured. "Of course, Dean. I apologize." There was a flutter of wings before Dean could ask Castiel what the angel was sorry _for_ , then he shook his head slowly and trudged back to the Impala.

Sam was already sulking in the passenger seat, arms folded. "Why are we even driving, anyway? You could have brought us home through the Angel Express."

"Didn't seem right to leave my baby out of a hunt," Dean slipped into the driver's seat and started up the engine. "Besides, it was only a couple hours' drive from the motel."

Sam eyed Dean thoughtfully for a moment, then he settled back into his seat with a sigh. "Dean. These powers of yours-"

"Look, I'm sorry I nearly burned your eyebrows off, all right?"

"That's not _it_ , Dean. I'm no stranger to powers, you know that. I know - of all people - I understand how they make you feel. Like you're stronger than anything. Like you're _invincible_. So..."

"What's your point, Sam?"

"How is what Michael's offering you different from me exorcising demons?" 

Dean exhaled loudly. "I can't _believe_ that you just said that."

"You _disintegrated_ that demon, Dean. The demon _and_ the human inside her. I'm sorry about hiding what I did with Ruby from you, but with what I did, the human actually tends to _survive_."

"I'm not getting high on angel blood to get these powers," Dean pointed out.

"No, you made a deal with an archangel instead. And I thought we both agreed _not_ to make any deals with archangels, whether their names started with 'M' or with 'L'." At Dean's tense silence, Sam added, "It's good that you're... feeling better, Dean. I'm just having some major second thoughts about your life decisions."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Dean sighed.

Surprisingly, Sam chuckled at that, and glanced out of the passenger window at the darkening road and the fenced pastures sleeting past them. "Yeah. I guess that'll probably sum up our lives."

"The difference, Sammy," Dean started slowly, after an hour's awkward radio silence between them, "Is that the way you got your extra mojo was by getting high on demon blood. And if it's anything like a normal addiction, you'd probably need more and more of it over time. And if what you go through when you go cold turkey is anything like what it sounds like, it can't be good for you. In _my_ case, I just have an extra set of guns for a year. And then I'll give them back."

"Or give yourself over." Sam closed his eyes. "Dean, didn't it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, this was another trick?"

"Well, if it's a trick, _I'm_ the one laughing." 

"Dean..." Sam stared out of the window for a moment longer, then he glanced back over. "Did something happen when you were trying to get Famine? I mean, before I got into the diner."

Dean hesitated, but only for a moment. Sam didn't need to know, not now, not ever. "You mean other than 'I'm an angel, I can stop this whenever I want' stuffing his face with raw meat? Because I've been trying to mentally delete that memory and it hasn't been working." 

Sam scrutinised him carefully, then he looked back over to the window. "Never mind. And I saw what Cas was doing too. It was gross."

"It's put me off beef burgers for the near future, I can tell you that," Dean agreed, relieved. 

Besides, the emptiness that he had felt, that Famine had seen within him, was either deadened now, or gone, which, in Dean's books, could only be a good thing, right? Being shot full of angel mojo probably did that to a person; angel powers probably came with some sort of side roofie of kittens and rainbows and calorie-free hope and change, if the general propaganda was anything to be believed. And it _was_ different from whatever Sam had been doing. Sam liked the power because of the trip that it gave him, because it made him feel stronger. Dean merely needed it as a means to an end - for now. He could give it up if he had to.

V.

As it turned out, Dean _could_ in fact turn a bottle of water into a fifty-year-old Macallan, and if that wasn't an indicator of how he now had powers for the greater good, he didn't know what would be.

The downside was that alcohol didn't seem to give him the nice, fuzzy buzz any longer, but the whisky still felt smooth and warm going down, and it was a fairly pleasant night so far: no rain, chill, or sudden incidence of monsters/demons. Sitting cross-legged on the concrete roof of the motel, Dean looked up at the stars and wondered how many worlds more out there were currently going through the same degree of fucked up as the one he was sitting on-

"Dean." 

Dean bit out a yelp and nearly fumbled his glass. "Uh, hey Cas. Found anything yet?"

"I spoke to some of Gabriel's known acquaintances. It appears that he favours the human city of Las Vegas."

Somehow, Dean was not surprised after all. Gabriel, after all, had been living as 'The Trickster' for possibly centuries, and there was no ongoing con this side of the Pacific that was bigger than Vegas. "Las Vegas is a big city."

"I am working on the specifics." 

Dean glanced over the back of his shoulder, but Castiel was expressionless. "That's... uh, good, Cas. Why don't you sit down here for a moment." He patted the ground next to him, and concentrated on his palm. After a couple of seconds, the spare glass from the motel dropped into his palm. Dean grinned at Castiel as the angel carefully sat down. "See? Focus. I'm practicing."

"This is hardly an appropriate use of your gift," Castiel murmured, though he accepted the glass.

"It's not like I have a finite amount of mojo, yeah?" Dean poured Castiel a healthy amount of whisky. "Drink up. And you don't have to keep reporting in, by the way. I mean, you still have your search for God and whatever else that you've got going on."

"About that," Castiel stared at his glass, for a moment, then he fished in the pocket of his trenchcoat, drawing out Dean's amulet. "I am returning this to you."

"You've found God already?" Dean arched his eyebrows, taking the amulet and slipping it back around his neck. "Did you punch the asshole in the face for us?"

"I have not found God. But I think that I do not need to," Castiel's lips quirked upwards so briefly that when Dean blinked, the angel was expressionless again. "I was looking for God because I was losing faith. Because I was losing... hope. That is no longer a problem."

"Uh. Sure, Cas. That's great. I guess. Makes two of us, anyway." Dean took a healthy swallow of whisky, pleasantly warmed. "Sam thought these powers were a bad thing. Like his demon blood high."

"He is wrong. What you have now, and what he was doing to himself, are utterly different." 

"Great! I agree. Maybe you could hop downstairs and tell-"

"However, your heavy-handed use of your gift could lead to similarly catastrophic consequences," Castiel continued, oblivious to the interruption, downing the whisky. "But I am certain that you will improve, somewhat. We can only hope that it will be by a sufficient measure."

"Thanks for the... heavily disclaimered vote of confidence," Dean drawled, shaking his head and pouring Castiel another glass. 

"I was-"

"Stating a fact, I know." Dean smiled, leaning back on a palm and looking back up at the stars. "Cas, are there other worlds out there?"

"I would not know."

"Really? You've never been curious? You can hop through space and time. Jump between here and outside of the Milky Way in an instant."

"Dean," Castiel looked up at the sky. "What do you see, when you look up?"

"Black sky. Stars. Some brighter than others."

"You can see the whole of Creation, because you were made in His image." Castiel glanced back down and took a sip of his glass. "We cannot. We see what we were made to see. What we were made to safeguard."

"What do _you_ see, then?" 

"Above? What your kind call the Silver City. The network of Heaven. Below, Hell. We perceive reality as a finite superimposition of multiple... dominions, all interconnected. Angels were made by God to serve a function, after all, and so we cannot see beyond that. We cannot exist beyond that." Castiel stared at his glass, then tipped his chin up to look back up at the sky. "It must be beautiful, what you can see. I've seen photographs from your telescopes, but I doubt that they can compare."

"I don't think I was drunk enough to understand that," Dean declared, after a moment's pause, pouring more whisky for the both of them, and Castiel opened his mouth, as if he was about to say something else, then he seemed to think better of it, chuckling instead. Castiel, _laughing_. "Cas, are you one of those happy drunks?"

"I am not drunk, Dean. But I _am_... happy. It has been some time." 

"The angelic version of catnip is whisky?"

"No, Dean," Castiel disagreed, if with an expression of studied patience. "Angels were made to have a purpose. To have a function. When they lose sight of that, the sensation is often... unbearable. I suppose the closest human equivalent would be 'abject misery'. That is why most angels who Fall - like Anna - remove their grace with their own hands."

"Doing the right thing makes you miserable?" 

"Going against my function, my orders, as a soldier who was part of a garrison, with my own part to play - was miserable. For a time." Castiel rubbed the tip of his left thumb slowly over the wet rim of his glass. "You have given me a purpose again. Thank you."

 _Angels really, really like following orders from bigger angels._ "Damnit, Sam," Dean groaned.

Still, a happy angel was better than a miserable angel, right? Especially since it clearly wasn't a sex thing, it was just some sort of... creepy... power play thing. Dean grimaced, closed his eyes, and tried to mentally delete the forming equation of Castiel, sex things, and power play things, and nearly short-circuited his militantly sober mind. 

"So what's the rest of the Host up to recently?" Dean asked, when Castiel seemed content to sit in silence and nurse the whisky. "Everyone went back home to wait?" A further thought occurred to him. "Actually, now that I'm sort-of-maybe-Michael, or at least borrowing Michael's mojo, can I tell them what to do?"

"I very much doubt that Raphael would heed your wishes," Castiel looked thoughtful. "Or Zachariah. But there are others in the garrisons who may. Especially now that assisting you is unlikely to be against Heaven's dictate. For some of us, you would effectively _be_ Michael, right now."

"Because of the wings?"

"You do not have Michael's wings," Castiel's grip on the glass tightened briefly, "But you do have wings. That would be good enough for some of us."

"Great. How about you see who we can sneak on over to Team Free Will?" Dean brightened up. "A lot of hunters could use some divine backup. Just make sure that everyone understands that nobody should be getting their eyes burned out." If he could prevent losing more friends like Ellen and Jo...

Castiel seemed to deflate a little. "I will make inquiries."

"We shouldn't just have you running yourself ragged. And these disasters are happening all over the world, not just in the US of A. Got to make sure everywhere's handled." When Castiel nodded slowly, Dean patted the angel gingerly on the back, and drawled, facetiously, "Don't worry, Cas. You'll still be my favourite angel." 

"Truly?" Castiel could really work an unnervingly intense stare when he wanted to.

"Uh, yeah. I mean, I didn't see any other feathered friends helping us out when shit was going south," Dean noted cautiously. "Maybe you did some of that shit to us under orders, but like I've said, when we really needed you, you came through. We appreciate that, Cas. It took balls." 

Castiel smiled... actually, Castiel was fucking _beaming_ at that, like a puppy which had just had a good tummy rub, and it occurred belatedly to Dean that maybe, just maybe, what angels liked more than taking orders from stronger angels was getting praised by them. Maybe that was why stronger angels were all such dicks, if praising their subordinates got this shade of awkward. Hell. This was in no way going to stop being maybe a sex thing. Especially if any of Castiel's potential-rebel-angel friends had vessels as hot as Anna's. 

Focus, Dean. _Focus_.

"Priority on Gabriel, though," Dean added, and Castiel nodded. "Maybe Chuck knows where he is. I'll get Sam to send him an email."

"He might." Castiel acknowledged, if doubtfully. "But Gabriel can be anywhere he wants, any _when_ he wants. Locating him will be the least of our problems if he does not wish to speak to us."

"Got to build an archangel mousetrap with some holy oil," Dean parsed. "Right."

"I have some ideas, but I'll have to check their feasibility."

"That's g-" Dean stopped himself before he started on the praise. That bright smile on Castiel was fucking _unnerving_ when he was used to Serious-Mode-Castiel, and it looked like he was never going to be tipsy enough to cushion the impending mental short-circuit. "Okay then, let me know." 

Castiel disappeared in a flutter of wings, leaving his glass behind. Dean stared at it for a long moment, sighed, and decided to drink the whisky straight from the bottle. He could feel his brain beginning to crack a little around the edges. 

Sam was never, ever going to learn about this particular revelation.

VI.

Chuck did not in fact know where Gabriel was, and seemed very apologetic about it, and in an additional downside, Becky now had Sam's email address.

"I thought she was all over Chuck now," Dean protested, for the fifth time or so during the long drive back towards South Dakota. The possible dead-rising-from-the-grave schtick that was happening didn't seem on a wide scale so far, and besides, it was pretty much in Bobby's back yard, anyway, if the shit hit the fan. No Angel Express required, or so he had told Sam. 

Privately, though, Dean liked driving his baby. He supposed that he was always happiest when he was on the road, even if his little brother had been bitching to him for over half an hour. Instantaneous angel teleportation took a lot of the pleasure out of hunting.

"She is. But that doesn't stop her from asking me all sorts of... extremely personal and disturbing questions," Sam's expression was frozen somewhere in the sweet spot between horror and astonishment. "I tell you, when women get obsessed over something, they really, _really_ get obsessed."

"What sort of questions?" Dean asked, mystified, because his sense of curiosity tended to be stupid that way. John Winchester had called curiosity a healthy hunter trait. Bobby said that it made Dean a bloody idjit.

"Well, for example, in one of the _least_... disturbing questions... she, ah, asked about the size of my, er-"

Dean made a choking noise. Sometimes, Bobby was right. "Okay, I don't want to know. Forget that I asked." 

"She asked about yours, too," Sam added helpfully. "And she wanted to know whether we sleep in the same bed at night."

"Sam!"

"I've blocked her email address." Sam concluded, if with a vaguely haunted expression. "She asked me to use a ruler. 'For Science', she said."

As it turned out, the nice little town in Bobby's backyard had a distinct zombie problem, culminating with the blonde, smiling Stepford zombie making pies in Bobby's _kitchen_. Sam was volunteered into keeping an eye on Karen while Dean took Bobby aside. 

"What the _fuck_ , Bobby," Dean hissed.

"You watch your language in this house now," Bobby said absently. 

"And you look naked without your hat," Dean told him, scowling, not because he was being petty or anything. "Bobby, there's obviously something wrong here. It's one of the omens. The dead coming back to life. You've been a hunter long enough to know that this never works out."

"You came back," Bobby replied quietly, hands clenched on the armrests of his wheelchair. "You and Sam. Same dumb bloody idjits as always." 

"That's not the same-"

"Why? Because Sam was brought back by a demon and you by an angel?" Bobby hissed. "Now you listen to me, Dean Winchester. I'm telling you to _leave this be_."

"And what if something goes wrong?"

"Then..." Bobby hesitated, frowning at him. "You're an angel now, ain't you. If Karen ain't all right, then fix her. Make her right."

"Bobby, I wouldn't know where to start-"

"Then learn!" Bobby snapped. "What the hell else are your wings good for?"

"Look-"

"Bobby?" Karen called, from the kitchen, and Bobby glared at Dean before beginning to wheel himself laboriously away.

"He does sort of have a point?" Sam suggested, when Dean cursed - quietly - next to the stairs down to the basement. 

"Traitor," Dean accused. Sam was in the process of scarfing down a slice of the Stepford zombie's freshly baked pie. It smelled good. It smelled like apple and cinnamon. Goddamnit.

"This is good," Sam observed, because his own brother clearly had a major character flaw with regards to temptation, and then added, "There's lots."

Dean took in a deep breath. "Sam. You do know that the zombie thing is just a bomb waiting to go off, right?"

"Well," Sam hedged, in between bites of pie, "If you hadn't been all 'angeled up', I would have been the first to agree, what with Cas being kind of... limited nowadays and all the other angels being dicks. But now you're an angel, so why don't you..." Sam wiggled the fingers of his free hand in the air.

"What. What's that?" Dean asked sarcastically, imitating the gesture. "I can't just jedi-mind-trick her into being alive and well again!"

"So, call down Cas and ask about it," Sam stated, if indistinctly.

"And then what? Do up the whole town? Make sure nobody dies again, ever?"

"If you're going to start talking about natural order, Bobby is going to kick you out of the house," Sam observed calmly. "And possibly never talk to either of us again."

"Turns out that we were brought back for a... a cosmic reason, remember?" Dean reminded him. "Everyone's meant to die sometime, Sammy. Even Karen. Even Mom and Dad."

"When was the last time you saw Bobby look this happy?" Sam was always good with the low blows. "And besides, it's the end of the world, Dean. Maybe anything you magic up isn't going to last long anyway. Try a slice. Then talk to Cas. All right?"

"One slice."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't intend (hopefully) to rewrite the rest of Season 5, because I know how that will probably be terribly boring for all of us involved, so this is hopefully the last bit that the AU will have in common. Or so.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Healing is a lot harder than Dean thought it would be.

VII.

Day Four of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo-angel: accidentally cause a chicken to explode. _Accidentally_ , being the key word. 

"Healing is not as easy as it looks," Castiel noted calmly and unnecessarily from just outside the post-chicken blast zone. Bits of charred feathers were still floating through the air, and Dean surreptitiously brushed some of the... debris... off his jacket.

"No shit, Sherlock." he muttered, wide-eyed. One moment the chicken had been clucking to itself and puttering on the concrete, the next, it was a smoking red post-chicken stain on the ground. The air stank of burned meat and feathers, and not even bones or guts remained. _Hell_.

"All right, I take back what I said, _don't_ try anything with Karen." Bobby called, from where he and Sam had taken cover instinctively behind one of the junked cars. Bobby could move that wheelchair _really_ quickly when things were going down. "Or my legs. Or anything that you still want to keep on kicking."

"Okay, where did I go wrong?" Dean ignored Bobby's so very constructive criticism, turning to Castiel. 

"It seems as though you attempted to accelerate its body's natural healing function far beyond its usual capacity-"

"That works in the X-men," Dean pointed out defensively. From behind the car, Sam rolled his eyes. 

"-and as such there was a conclusive and highly accelerated... structural failure." Castiel finished. 

"That's a very scientific way of saying that it exploded into chicken atoms," Sam muttered. "Okay, Cas, what would _you_ have done?"

"An angel's grace is a tool of creation," Castiel was circling the blast zone, scuffing the stain absently with the tip of his shoe. "Creation and transmutation form the core functional abilities of us angels. I would have recreated the skin and flesh that was sundered and knit it back together. To do so, particularly in an instant, one would need an understanding of the construct of the subject at a detail that would elude a human."

"Thanks, Cas. Maybe you could have said that _before_ I unintentionally committed an act of animal cruelty."

Castiel shrugged. "The chicken died instantaneously. It would have suffered a similar fate in a slaughterhouse on its usual route to becoming part of your diet, and you consume chicken thirty-two point five percent of the time, usually in a deep fried form. Furthermore, it is unlikely that you would have believed me outright had I told you from the beginning that our concept of healing is beyond your capacity and would have attempted it, with far more disastrous results."

"But I can teleport, smite hellhounds and turn water into whisky?"

"What you think of as 'teleportation' is actually flight. It is an instinctive ability conferred to you by your wings. As is the ability to move small objects through space. Regarding 'smiting', it does not require much imagination or forethought to create an expulsion of destructive force. And as to transmuting water, you are intimately familiar with the taste, scent and feel of whisky, as well as most of its ingredients to a degree that is unhealthy for your liver. Understanding is, as I mentioned, nine-tenths of the process."

Sam choked down a snort of laughter, and Dean glared at him pointedly. "All right then, health pep talk aside, how do we fix Karen?" 

"As I said when I looked at her, she is a construct within which her soul is tenuously attached." Castiel's expression grew slightly pinched. The angel had appeared in the living room when called, and had taken one look at Karen and had said 'Dean, are you aware that there is a fleshy construct in the kitchen', after which Bobby had promptly banished them all to the scrapyard, rather to Castiel's hurt puzzlement. 

"How do we make it un-tenuous?" Dean interrupted. 

"I have not seen its like..." Castiel began, then corrected himself, "Actually, I may have. Creating temporarily animated constructs - what you would call zombies - used to be one of Death's favorite calling cards. One of them would usually have a message to deliver."

"The horseman, Death?" Sam clarified, and Castiel nodded. "Damn."

"We've seen War and Famine, but not Death," Bobby wheeled his way carefully out from behind the car now that it was clear that no more chickens were in danger of structural failures. "A few people rising from the dead, that's rather tame compared to what happened in the other towns where the horsemen rolled in."

"So what, we gather up all the re-animated people and ask them if any one of them maybe has a postcard for us?" Dean snorted. 

"Usually once the message is delivered, the souls would return to wherever they were prior to Death's calling, and the constructs would turn mindless," Castiel added helpfully.

"Okay, no talking to any re-animated people, then." Sam leaned against the car, with a sigh. "And I guess Dean and I should hit the road?"

"They will usually turn mindless in a few days, regardless of whether the message is delivered." Castiel shook his head. "Besides-"

"Karen?" Bobby turned around, blinking, as Karen picked her way a little stiffly through the line of rusting cars towards the shed, her gait jerky, like a marionette's. 

Dean tensed, but Castiel muttered, "Her soul is still in place," and he reluctantly relaxed, though he could see Sam glancing towards the back of the shed, where the heavy tools were, just in case.

Karen stopped a few feet away, and folded her arms. "Dean Winchester," she stated, and there was a flat hollowness to her tone, like an echo, winding ancient through time. "Curious. This is not one of the futures that I thought contained much potential."

"If you had wanted to talk to me you could have called," Dean noted warily, "Rather than, uh, raise the dead and use them as answering machines. Flashy, but not necessary."

"In most futures they would have been a mere warning to your friend," Death nodded at Bobby, who blinked rapidly. "I am bound to Lucifer in a spell of his making, and he wished to issue a... statement to any who would aid Sam Winchester." Death-as-Karen smiled faintly, showing a line of white teeth. "Flashy, as you say, and not necessary, but he is so very childish in many ways."

"But...?" Sam's eyes were darting between Bobby and Karen.

"But now it seems that a little... amoeba, in the scheme of things, has acquired part possession of a loose cannon of some power," 'Karen' inclined her head neatly in Dean's direction. "And as such we may have some... common ground upon which to negotiate. You want Lucifer dead. He will not die while I am yet bound to him. Unbind me, and try that primitive weapon of yours again. You might find it less useless, this time around."

"So Lucifer didn't die when we shot him with the Colt because he had some sort of pinky promise with you," Dean summarised. 

Death rolled her eyes and exhaled, ragged. "I do so dislike dealing with mortals. Your simple minds are so difficult to rally. The answer is _yes_. Lucifer, God, myself, Destiny and Time, these are the five things in this Creation that the Colt cannot kill. Unbind me from Lucifer, and five becomes four. Is that a simple enough equation for you?"

"Lucifer himself built the binding spell," Castiel murmured cautiously. "As far as I am aware, no unbinding spell exists."

"Then _build_ one," 'Karen' said testily. "Dean Winchester should have the strength now with which to power it."

"And um, about all these people you've raised..." Bobby began, "Could, you, uh-"

"I'll make one exception," Death conceded, after a pause. "As a gesture of good-will, perhaps. You choose, Dean."

"Karen," Dean stated, unhesitatingly.

"Are you sure?" Death asked mockingly. "Not the ten-year-old child? Not the heart surgeon? Not the fathers and the mothers who have returned? You'll return a housewife to an old widower who lives by himself in a scrapyard?"

"Karen," Dean repeated, clenching his hands, because thinking about the choice would probably drive him to the end of a bottle, or maybe an entire liquor store, because life had to be made of simple choices of late or he'll go crazy with second thoughts. "That's my choice."

"Very well. I expect results." Death inclined Karen's head again, and then Karen was blinking owlishly and looking surprised. "Oh. I thought I was in the kitchen."

Bobby looked over at Castiel, who nodded. "She's fully human again." 

"Bobby?" Karen asked, uncertainly, when Bobby's face crumpled, and as Sam motioned quickly at Dean, they padded silently out of the shed and back towards Bobby's house. The Singers were going to need some private time. 

Once in the living room, Sam turned to Castiel, looking excited. "What did he mean, Lucifer built the spell?" 

"Where did you think spells came from? Sigils, binding signs, magic? Language?"

Dean exchanged glances with Sam, and then shrugged. "Uh. God?"

"Indirectly." Castiel allowed, patiently. "Grace is a form of pure creation. The archangels created Enochian, and from there, the derivation of energy that your kind terms 'magic'. Black magic was created afterwards, when Lucifer Fell. He is still an angel after all."

"But you'll have no idea how to create an unbinding spell." When Castiel shook his head, Sam continued, "Well, uh, couldn't we work from, I don't know, precedent? There's lots of undoing spells out there. Maybe they've got some common denominator."

"Eye of newt?" Dean suggested facetiously, as he poured himself a glass of water from the tap and concentrated. Instantly, the liquid turned the rich amber of a gold label Johnnie Walker. "Sweet!"

Sam rolled his eyes again. " _Dean._ "

"Hey, the way I'm looking at it," Dean gestured at Sam with his whisky glass, "We have an immediate zombie problem and a less immediate research-and-experimentation problem. I'm delegating."

"You're going to, what, smite half the town while you're at it?" Sam asked dryly. "I don't know if you've noticed, Dean, but your aim's a little shot. And when I mean 'shot', I mean it's fucking _nuclear_."

"Then I'll do it the old fashioned way. Guns. And a touch of Angel Express," Dean pointed out, if sulkily. "Me zombies, you research."

" _You're_ the pseudo-archangel! You heard what Death said."

"Who just exploded a chicken, despite best intentions, about half an hour or so ago," Dean reminded Sam dryly. "Besides, we've got Cas. He can come up with a-"

"I can't 'come up with a spell', Dean," Castiel interrupted, looking apologetic. "It's beyond my capacity. To take a scrawl, or a string of words and some materials, and to give it life and meaning - that requires power beyond what I have. I would not even know how to teach you to go about it."

"So it goes back around to digging up Gabriel," Sam sighed. "Great."

"I guess you'll just have to work faster," Dean told Castiel.

"I will make inquiries," Castiel dropped his gaze, and vanished.

Sam shook his head. "Wow, Dean. Way to kick the puppy."

"Hey, he likes working. He's happy." Dean said defensively. He was _not_ going to bring up the matter of praise. "So I guess we're both on zombie duty. We'll need to get a list of the people who've come back from Bobby, and then split up the stakeouts."

"The people who rose from the dead first probably have a shorter timer," Sam agreed, padding over to Bobby's desk to rummage around in the papers. "I think Bobby had a map of the town somewhere... oh, uh, hi, Karen."

"I'll get dinner ready," Karen smiled, as she swept past them back into the kitchen. "Oh. Where's your... friend? In the trenchcoat?"

"He's out," Sam said quickly, even as Dean said, "He doesn't need to eat."

"That's not very nice, Dean," Karen raised her eyebrows in a gentle rebuke, and disappeared into the kitchen. After a moment, there was a mildly astonished, "Why in the world did I make so many pies?"

Bobby wheeled into the living room and up to Sam, red-eyed but otherwise composed. "What are you looking for?"

"Map of the town and other... new risers," Sam dropped his voice, with a quick glance back at the kitchen.

"Don't worry. I've explained things." Bobby pushed Sam's hand aside and dragged out a map from under a stack of books. "Here. And I made a list of the names already. Marked out the houses. Habit. And Dean," Bobby hesitated, looking around the room for a moment, then he said, gruffly, "Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

"Karen's not entirely happy about it," Bobby sighed. "She thinks you should'a picked the kid."

"I don't know the kid."

"You don't know Karen either."

"I know _you_ ," Dean countered. "Look. Did you want me to pick the kid?"

"Well..." Bobby looked frustrated. "It makes me feel like a total... ars... craphole about it, but no. So I'd choose my wife over a friend's kid. People are selfish bas... _creatures_ and I'm no different."

The new No Bad Language in the House rule was going to be difficult for Bobby. Even Sam had raised his eyebrows at that one, mouthing 'craphole?'. Bobby snorted, glaring back down at the map.

"Makes two of us." Dean said wryly, pinching at the bridge of his nose, "And I'm supposed to be the 'Righteous Man', remember."

"Don't know what I'm going to say to Jody," Bobby muttered. "Well, we'll deal with it when we get there."

VIII.

Sioux Falls went all Night of the Living Dead despite everything, and after burning the bodies, they regrouped in Bobby's kitchen, with Karen fixing them cups of hot cocoa.

"I don't get one thing, Bobby," Sheriff Jody Mills, as it turned out, was a tough bird in a tight spot, as shaken and pale as she was now. "What about Karen? Why didn't she turn?"

Karen froze from where she was wiping down a bowl at the sink, even as Bobby growled, "Jody..."

"Tell her, Bobby. She deserves to know," Karen cut in, putting down the bowl.

"You won't believe me," Bobby told Mills.

"Try me." The Sheriff said flatly. "Bobby, tonight I saw my son... and my husband... there was blood _everywhere_ , Bobby! And if Sam here hadn't arrived when he did..."

"Death wanted us to do him a favour," Dean said, when Bobby scowled at his cup of cocoa and Sam squirmed, looking uncomfortable. "He said that I could pick one person out of everyone who had come back for keeps. He's a bit high handed about the messaging business, apparently zombies is one of his favourite methods. I'm sorry about your son, Sheriff. But if you want to be angry at someone, Bobby had nothing to do with this."

Mills closed her eyes and exhaled, then she took a sip of the cocoa in silence, a tremor going through her fingers. They drank in silence, the only sounds from Karen washing up at the sink. When Mills finished the cup, she glanced back at Bobby. "If I were you, or your friends, if I had a choice, I would have picked Karen too. We'll all pick our loved ones, most of us. But you and Karen aren't going to be real popular in town right now."

Karen's shoulders slumped a little, even as Bobby nodded. "Yeah. I get that."

"Thanks for the cocoa, Bobby, Karen." Mills got slowly to her feet, looking exhausted. "And I hope you both don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want to see the both of you for a while." She clasped Karen by the shoulder, then walked out of the kitchen. After a short while, they heard the main door open and close.

A plate shattered in the sink, and Dean flinched, nearly upending his cup over himself. Bobby bit down briefly on his lower lip. "Karen..."

"All those people... today..." Karen's voice shook, and she was bent over the sink. "Why, Bobby? Why am I left?"

"Well, uh-" Sam began, only for Bobby to cut them dead with a glance and jerk his thumb towards the door. As they slunk off out of the house, Dean could see Bobby wheeling himself carefully over to the sink.

"So, uh, that went well," Sam noted, when they were back in the Impala and cruising aimlessly out towards the nearest highway.

"They'll work things out." 

"Yeah. I don't doubt that." 

"What, would _you_ have picked the kid?" Dean snapped, frustrated. "Maybe he would have grown up to be the second coming of Mother Theresa. Maybe he'd have been a drunkard who beat his wife and never amounted to anything. How were we going to know? But I know Bobby, and Karen was making him happy, so I picked Karen, all right? Caveman logic. Blow me."

"I didn't say anything," Sam muttered, after an injured pause, slouching. "It's just... I guess the world's not fair. How many times have the both of us come back? So maybe we have some sort of cosmic function, but-"

"I'm sure that a lot of those people would rather stay dead than have our lives," Dean cut in, glaring at the road. "So we come back from the dead. At least we try and pay it forward." 

"By jump-starting the apocalypse-"

"Sammy you _know_ we had a _lot_ of 'help' for that. Guilt's not all ours. But at least we're half-killing ourselves trying to fix it, right? How many people out there try to take that on their shoulders?"

"So you're saying it's an equivalent exchange."

"I'm not saying that it's anything," Dean growled. "I'm saying that we got given second chances, and I wasn't going to spend it marinating myself in whisky, or running after the devil's work trying to patch fences long after every fucking bit of crazy has left the building."

"Okay, Dean. Okay." Sam stared out of the window. "It's fine."

"Is it?"

"It's just that... what you and I are now," Sam said delicately, "I think there's going to be a lot more choices up the road. I was wondering whether you were going to make all of them by yourself."

"What?"

"I thought that we were in this together, Dean," Sam glanced at him, jaw set. "But you seem to be flying solo so far."

Dean exhaled noisily and slapped his palms on the wheel. "Sam, we've been over this."

"No, we haven't. You've been calling all the shots, Dean. What to do next, the demon blood thing, Ruby, and now your deal with Michael, and-"

"And does this have to do with Karen?"

"Maybe," Sam said flatly, "Just maybe, I'm not entirely sure that your choices aren't selfish."

"You would have picked Karen too!"

"And I would have known that it was the selfish choice. I wouldn't have thought about weighing up what the kid might have been, I wouldn't have thought that it was the better choice. That's my point, Dean! You're so convinced that what you're doing all the time is _right_ that you're like... you're-"

"The 'Righteous Man'?" Dean supplied dryly, trying for humour, but when Sam glared at him, he looked back over at the road. "Sammy, I know what I'm doing. You've got to-"

"You ask for trust from other people all the time, Dean," Sam noted grimly. "But it sure is hard to get any of it from you."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel brings back-up. Maybe.

IX.

Day Ten of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo-angel: meeting the angelic equivalent of the Scooby Gang. The Buffy version.

Castiel had arrived in Bobby's scrapyard when Dean and Sam had been on their way to the Impala with a pair of other angels, one in a male vessel, one female. The male one wore a black jacket, a v-necked gray shirt, jeans and an insouciant grin, like some sort of disaffected ex-rock star, and the female angel was similarly casually dressed, charcoal gray cardigan over a pale blue blouse and jeans, like an off-duty secretary.

Given that all of the other angels they had seen to date (minus Lucifer) were all suited up like penguins, Dean was somewhat taken aback. "Wow. Is it angel casual day today?"

"It's always casual day with Castiel," the male angel quipped. "Management hates it. You have no idea."

"Castiel suggested that we dress... down," the female angel stated as she looked Dean and Sam slowly over, with the general air of a scientist looking at some particularly disgusting lower life form in a petri dish. "Apparently it is meant to be reassuring to humans."

"I like the clothes, though," the male angel picked at his sleeve. "Comfy."

"This is Balthazar, and this is Rachel," Castiel made introductions. "They are very old friends of mine. They've agreed to-"

"Hey, hey, hey, we haven't _agreed_ to anything," Balthazar cut in. "I thought we were just sneaking down here to take a look at what the fuss over your favourite pets was all about."

Rachel transferred her disdainful stare to Balthazar. "That is untrue and you know it, Balthazar. Castiel asked us for aid." 

"All right, _you_ might think that it's... what's that human word for it... _kosher_ to play house with a fallen angel, but I happen to like my grace the way it is right now. In _place_."

"Doesn't he remind you of someone?" Sam muttered to Dean. "Someone... sort of um, vertically challenged?"

"I think that we meet a lot of assholes in this line of work," Dean shook his head. "And everyone's vertically challenged compared to you, Sammy. You're going to have to be more specific." 

"Balthazar was one of Gabriel's favourites," Castiel explained. "He'll have a better chance of finding him."

"The word is 'was', Castiel," Balthazar rolled his eyes. "We've been _over_ this. You think my garrison didn't try and find him? It's one of our favourite ongoing pastimes, playing hide-and-seek with the boss."

"Can I have a word with you, Cas?" When Castiel merely tilted his head, questioningly, Dean added, "Out of earshot of the Scooby Gang?"

Balthazar and Rachel exchanged mutually puzzled glances, then Balthazar drawled, "I don't know what you're insinuating but I think that I don't like it." 

"'Out of earshot' will require us to leave in your car," Castiel pointed out.

"Oh, for... Sam, um, hold the fort for a while, all right?" Dean grabbed Castiel's arm.

"Dean!" Sam looked mildly panicky, but then the scrapyard was abruptly replaced by the sprawling turf of Central Park, in the shade of a tree. None of the people lying on the grass or jogging past seemed to bat an eye, though the closest few who were on their mobile phones cursed and shook their cells. That was New York for you.

Castiel was looking resolutely at his feet, and as Dean arched an eyebrow at him, he began to flush slowly upwards from the neck. "Dean."

"Oh. Right." Dean concentrated on the wings. "I never expected angels to be embarrassed about these bits. I mean, _wings_ , wings are meant to be awesome."

"There's nothing to be embarrassed about." Castiel seemed confused. "Especially for you. Your wings... your wings are perfect, Dean. They're beautiful."

"Uh, thanks, I guess?" Dean hesitated, unsure what to make of Castiel's shy smile. The expression looked decidedly fucking weird on an angel that he had seen jam angel-killing blades through other angels, face down archangels and smite demons with the touch of his palm. "Yours are... nice too. Er. Kinda big," he replied lamely. When Castiel started beaming again, in evident pleasure, Dean recalled his belated resolve _not_ to make any compliments. "Anyway. Balthazar and Rachel. Seriously?"

"They are both competent. I have completed many missions alongside them." Castiel said earnestly.

"They're your best friends or something, right?" 

"The concept is similar."

Dean scuffed his shoes on the grass for a moment. "You know, Cas, the thought sort of occurs to me... how every other angel sort of looks and acts like an extra from the Matrix movies but you guys are kinda different..."

"Every angel is different," Castiel was beginning to look bewildered again.

"Just to confirm, Heaven isn't actually like some sort of high school, with the cool kids clubs and the jocks, and you guys aren't like, say, the Nerdy Science Club Guys, right?" 

Castiel appeared to give the suggestion some due thought, then he observed, "I cannot see any correlation, Dean."

Great. "And uh, only two angels? I thought you guys were legion, or something."

Castiel looked away, as though ashamed. "None of the others answered. I suppose my Fallen status has yet to be revoked."

Way to drop-kick the puppy, Dean. "Hey, Cas, it's cool." Dean gingerly squeezed Castiel's shoulder. "Two angels are better than no angels. And what the hell, most of the other angels I've met so far have been dicks, anyway. Let's get back."

"I'll take us. Don't use your wings." Castiel pressed his fingers to Dean's forehead, and then Dean was blinking as they were back in the scrapyard. Sam was standing exactly where Dean had left him, but Rachel was inspecting her vessel's nails, and Balthazar was peering curiously into a junked car. 

"All right then," Balthazar spread his palms wide. "Castiel, your pets are _boring_. I think I'll get back to the garrison, now, if it's all the same to you."

"Hey, who are you calling a pet?" Dean growled. "I could probably kick your ass in a fight right now."

"Oh _really_ ," Balthazar grinned at him, and gave him a slow once-over. "Just because you've temporarily borrowed Michael's energy doesn't mean that you're Michael, kitten."

"Actually he does have the power to..." Castiel said an Enochian word, which probably had somewhat fewer vowels than humanly possible. Both Rachel and Balthazar stiffened, eyebrows arching in tandem.

"Uh, what he said," Dean nodded, trying to play along and look unruffled.

"You have the power to what?" Sam asked, blinking.

"Hm, well, it doesn't negate the fact that you're still cut out of Heaven," Balthazar nodded at Castiel. "And I'll like to keep the member privileges for now, thanks."

"Do you see Raphael, or anyone else, bearing down on us right now?" Castiel pointed out reasonably. "They've accepted Michael's decision. For now, Dean Winchester _is_ the Michael Sword, he _is_ Michael's will. Do you think that aiding the First among us will cause you to lose your 'member privileges'?"

"He does have a point, Balthazar," Rachel was nodding slowly.

"All right, let's put it this way. Me," Balthazar pressed his palms on his chest, "Gabriel's garrison. Of which the boss is missing, so much for that. You two," he pointed at Rachel and Castiel, "Michael's garrison. Of which the boss is missing and/or maybe taking a vacation inside a human. There's a difference. The two of you have sort of a... broader discretion here."

"Being? Your boss is missing. _You_ can do what you want," Dean pointed out.

"My boss is currently Raphael," Balthazar pulled a face. "The garrison was divvied up after our Great Leader decided to go slumming. And the word in Heaven is that Raphael really, really dislikes you, Dean Winchester. Understand that I'm only using the euphemism 'dislike' here because I am unable to think of an equivalent description in your language at a short notice."

"Do you like Raphael?" Sam asked.

Balthazar rolled his eyes. "Does anyone?" 

"Well then, help us dig up Gabriel. Maybe we can convince him to go back. Then you'll have your, uh, 'Great Leader' again." Sam was always good with the carrots.

"Tempting," Balthazar said, after a pause, "But the likelihood of that is nil, I'm afraid. If Gabriel had wanted to come back, he would have done it a long time ago."

Rachel sighed. "Balthazar, I am going to aid Castiel. Dean Winchester is not Michael, but Michael is missing, and what he has left with this human is as much as we can find, so it must serve."

"Great. Good for you." Balthazar clapped his hands archly. "So if you'll excuse me-"

"And if you do not agree to aid us," Rachel was inspecting her nails again, "When we find Gabriel - and we will, you know me - I shall tell him exactly what you have been doing on the Isle since his disappearance."

Balthazar tensed up. " _Blackmail_ , Rachel? Really?"

"I shall merely be relating the truth to a superior," Rachel smiled thinly.

Castiel glanced between Rachel and Balthazar, blinking. "Balthazar... you _went_ to the Isle?"

"It wasn't the only thing that he did," Rachel said primly. "It was more a matter of the things that he _took_ from the Isle."

"All right, _fine_ ," Balthazar snapped, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. "I'm shocked, Rachel, I really am."

Rachel shrugged. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

"Oh, don't quote the bloody Book at me." Balthazar sulked. "Fine. What do you want me to do, kids? I told you, I've been over this. The entire garrison searched Earth for Gabriel for _centuries_. We still do it now and then whenever we're bored. Conclusion: he's somehow angel-proofed his vessel."

"Apparently he's in Vegas," Dean suggested.

"We've covered Vegas. One of the first things we did was to search out every major gambling den on the planet." Balthazar pulled a face.

"I used the Song of Ezekiel," Castiel said mildly. "Gabriel is in Las Vegas."

"Where did you learn the words?" Rachel blinked.

"How did you get your hands on the ingredients?" Balthazar demanded, and when Castiel assumed a faintly embarrassed expression, he laughed. "And just when I thought that our quiet little Castiel couldn't get any more naughty."

"You _burned_ the Shroud of Turin?" Rachel continued, wide-eyed. "Castiel!"

"Wait, you _what_?" Sam yelped. "It's _authentic_?"

"Hello? Only person not getting the memo?" Dean raised his palm impatiently. 

"It was necessary." Castiel muttered uncomfortably. "And I only cut and burned a square inch of it, off the corner. No one will notice the difference."

Rachel's eyes somehow managed to widen further, and her voice climbed half a register. "' _No one will notice the difference_ '?"

"I had no idea that your crush on this human had progressed to such an alarming degree," Balthazar arched his eyebrows. "Very well then. Where in Las Vegas?"

"I affixed the seeking spell to a map." Castiel pulled a folded map out from inside his trenchcoat and opened it. A small, pale green circle lay over a corner of The Strip, and as Dean watched, it disappeared and reappeared in another corner. 

"Well," Balthazar blinked, "That is both... incredibly useful and somehow useless at the same time, Castiel."

"I'm sure you guys can figure something out." Dean grimaced at the map. From the way Gabriel was hopping around, no wonder an entire garrison of angels couldn't pin him down. "Sam and I have to go hunting. Some hunters over at Wyoming called Bobby an hour ago, something about a possible massed maybe-ghoul problem. Keep up the good work," he added, automatically, and goddamn but Castiel was smiling broadly again.

"We will."

"I think my vessel just threw up a little in its mouth," Balthazar said acidly.

X.

As it turned out, the issue wasn't exactly a ghoul problem but the bit in the Book of Revelations about the army of human-faced locusts with lion's teeth, scales and stinging tails, and 'locusts' was just another word for 'fucking hungry monsters'. Dean was never going to be able to look at washing powder and batteries quite the same way again.

Good guys: Him, Sam, Rufus and a couple of grizzled old men called the O'Malley Twins, despite having no blood relation and no apparent facial similarity. Hunters got strange in their old age. Bad guys: Hordes of human-shaped monsters with sharp teeth and viper-quick stinging tails that could be extended on will.

Upside: The locust monsters were weak to the usual stuff, holy water, rock salt rounds, silver. Downside: There seemed to be no fucking end to them. 

They were walled up in the local college, which at least was made of old-fashioned, solid brick, with the remnants of the township, and Rufus had already sorted the people into helping make salt rounds in the library. He looked harassed and exhausted, sunk onto an armchair and watching the O'Malley Twins peruse a map with a couple of elderly locals, marking out possible escape routes and supply locations.

"No offense, boys," Rufus said dryly, as they padded over, "But when I asked Bobby to 'send everyone', I sort of expected more."

"Yeah, well, be grateful, Rufus," Dean said dryly, "I mean, if we hadn't been nearby, it would have been at least nine hours' drive." As it was, he'd had to use the Angel Express to pop Sam and himself into town. Given what he'd seen the Locusts do to a car when they'd been trying to find Rufus, he was somewhat glad that he hadn't tried to bring the Impala.

"So what's the plan?" Sam asked, with a glance over at the townsfolk. "We're going to try and evacuate?"

"Too many people. And we've got kids as well as old folks," Rufus sighed. "This is why I asked for _lots_ of back-up. Damnit, Bobby!"

"Everyone's fighting fires everywhere," Dean said reasonably, if a little guiltily. "Phone's been ringing off the hook in Bobby's place. So you've just got us. Listen, Bobby said there was a leader of these guys, right? Maybe if we kill him, they'd stop coming."

Rufus stared at Dean, then at Sam. "How the hell did the two of you live long enough to grow as old as you have with that kind of approach to logic?"

"I take it that you don't agree with my plan," Dean hedged.

"Didn't I mention an 'army of monsters', earlier?" 

"But it might work, won't it?" Sam was already settling down in the other armchair and pulling out his laptop. "We even already have its name. It's mentioned in Revelations. Abbadon, the King of the Locusts. He's a demon. The usual stuff will work."

"You guys must have been born with God's own luck," Rufus muttered, glancing between Dean and Sam. "That's one stupid and crazy plan."

"Yeah, well, we'll concentrate on our plan, and you can um, keep all the moms and dads here safe until we're done," Dean grinned.

"You think the Twins and I didn't try and take out Abbadon?" Rufus growled. "There were five of us when we first rolled into town, Dean. There's three of us left now. Ally and Leo were roadkill by the time the monsters were done with them."

"So you know where Abbadon is."

"Sure." Rufus threw up his hands, looking tired. "He's in the stadium. The football one, out closer to the highway, not the baseball one. What's left of it, anyway. Holed up there with all his hungry, hungry monsters. Skinny guy, gray beard, bald head, looks like a janitor. You guys are just going to bust in there?" 

"Maybe."

Rufus muttered something under his breath. "Let me talk to Bobby. Maybe he can shout some sense into the two of you."

"There's no special lore on Abbadon," Sam noted, "He'll probably be on par with Alastair, I guess. But I'll check."

"As long as 'checking' doesn't mean 'drinking... stuff'."

Sam sighed. "Dean, we know that works, don't we?"

"You guys took out _Alastair_?" Rufus frowned. "Well, I'll be."

"We had... other means, that we don't have right now," Sam shot Dean a pointed look.

"Well we have other, other means now," Dean glowered at Sam, who rolled his shoulders into a shrug and looked back down at the laptop. "How close did you guys get to the stadium?"

"He's in Gate three. It's a small stadium, but you can't miss it. The swarms of Locusts around there would probably give you a clue. We didn't get far." Rufus said slowly. "You guys are serious about this?"

"Oh, we're serious." 

"We could call for more back-up," Sam suggested from the armchair, concentrating on his laptop. "One or more of your two new friends."

"They're better off doing what they need to do," Dean scowled at Sam, who raised his palms for a moment in a gesture of mock-surrender before turning back to his laptop. "Rufus, how attached do you think are the um, townsfolk to this stadium of theirs?"

"You gonna blow it up?" Rufus looked speculative. "You and what plastic?"

"We've got the... plastic," Dean grinned impishly, flexing his fingers, and from the laptop, Sam rolled his eyes. "So?"

"Between no stadium, and having a stadium filled with flesh-eating monsters, I think they'd go with no stadium," A smirk was growing on Rufus' face. "All right. Maybe your plan isn't so dumb after all. But you're still going to have to wade through all the Locusts to plant the explosives."

"You let us worry about that, Rufus." 

Rufus stared at him for a long moment, then he snorted and pushed himself wearily to his feet, crooking his fingers. Dean followed him over to the table with the Twins, who shuffled aside to make space. The stadium in question had already been circled in red. After a moment, Sam also shouldered in beside him.

"That's ground zero," Rufus pointed. "And this," he gestured at the orange circle around it, "Is sort of Locust country right now. We're on the outskirts, and they either haven't found us yet or haven't finished eating up anything remotely edible in town and then some."

Dean shuddered. "I saw one of them chug down some _washing powder_." 

"Got to be clean inside and outside," the shorter, ginger-haired O'Malley Twin, Rob, grunted, as he waved the elderly folks back to the main table set up as a human rock-salt-shell production belt. The other bulky, tall one, Billy, nodded slowly. He was cradling the evillest looking shotgun Dean had ever seen, some variant of the Mossberg 500, if Dean knew anything about it, with some sort of grenade launcher adaptor. That thing probably had a kick like a _horse_.

"So we're probably running out of time," Sam murmured, because he was usually optimistic like that. "Dean, we're going to have to act fast. Research is going to take time."

"No 'other means', Sam." 

Sam sighed. "Remember what I said about you having to call all the shots?"

Rufus cleared his throat. "Could you guys save the family drama for _after_ the end of the world?"

Dean mouthed _this is not over_ to Sam before glancing back at Rufus. "Sorry. Anything else?"

"'Anything else'?" Rufus glanced between the both of them, "You guys want to share your trump cards now, or what? Because the way I'm looking at it, it's going to be bloody suicide, and if the two of you are just going to bumrush the stadium as you are, I'm doing the two of you a favour and knocking you both out right now."

"Ah, well," Dean looked at Sam, who shrugged. "I'm sort of... borrowing Michael's powers, right now. The Archangel."

There was a long pause, where Rufus exchanged pointed looks with the Twins, then he stared back at Dean. "Yeah? And I'm Queen fucking Elizabeth."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An earlier version of this chapter forgot that Ruby was dead. Oops. It should be fixed now. This is what you get when you watch 3 seasons more or less back to back. XD;; Timeline grows fuzzy.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Older people + Hunting = Backseat Driving

XI.

Day Eleven of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo-angel: attempt to open a can of whoop-ass on some Locust monsters. With unfortunately irregular results. While older folk are backseat driving.

"You forgot that lot behind that minibus," Rufus pointed out helpfully. Dean took in a deep breath and resisted the urge to smite one of Bobby's oldest friends, gritting his teeth.

"Didn't we suggest that you should wait back at the college with the civilians?" he growled, though he extended a palm and concentrated. After a second, the minibus imploded, in an orange ball of fire and debris and extra-crispy Locust monster bits. It turned out that vehicles, being chock full of fuel tanks and metal parts, were easy to nudge into localised explosives.

"I don't know, Dean, I think we could use the backup," Sam had borrowed Billy's grenade launcher, but had long run out of ammunition, the weapon now strapped to his back. The shotgun in his hands boomed, causing a couple of Locusts to stagger back, squealing and baring their dual rows of deceptively small, sharp teeth, their skin melting and fizzing where the rock salt rounds had landed. 

On closer look, the Locusts wouldn't really pass as human; they had human faces, in the way that a kid's clay sculpture had a human face - disturbingly lumpy, grayish and approximate. And there were all those goddamn _teeth_. And that crazy speed. And the weird humming, buzzing sound that they seemed to emanate out of nowhere, that grew ever more thunderous as they headed towards the stadium.

"Bobby said that you guys sometimes run with an angel," Rufus was grinning madly and reloading his rifle. "I always thought he was shitting me or being metaphorical. Is this what it feels like?"

"No, actually, usually the bad guy tends to conveniently have anti-angel bug spray, or an anti-angel field or something," Dean muttered. That sort of shit happened way too often to be coincidental, in his opinion. Poor Castiel.

"That's why we need backup, Dean," Sam pointed out calmly, as usual the optimist of the family. "I'm waiting for the anti-angel bug spray."

"Try not to be such a downer, Sammy." Dean concentrated on the group of Locusts swarming towards them from the left, and it turned out that the chicken trick had been good for something after all.

The X-Men really did have some explaining to do.

They cut a swathe through the Locust hordes to the stadium car park, leaving a smoking, burning wake behind them, and despite himself, Dean was rather beginning to enjoy it. At the beginning he had tried to play it careful, given how Castiel seemed to have limited resources of angel mojo, but as it turned out, archangels didn't appear to have the same problem. It was like swatting flies all the way to the bank. 

The stadium car park was full of abandoned cars and other vehicles, all of which went crazy with their lights and alarm systems the moment Dean got rid of another oncoming group, with Sam and Rufus mopping up the stragglers that survived the blast zone or which tried to flank them.

"They're just going to keep coming," Rufus grunted, as he aimed and fired his rifle, causing a Locust twenty feet back to snap back and writhe in death throes on the ground. "You close enough now?"

"Um." Angelic mojo was closely tied, according to Castiel anyway, with willpower and imagination - Dean reached out towards the supports of Gate Three of the stadium, trying to grope for the metal girders within them, and blinked as instead of being able to feel the structure of it all, the weight and the age, his mind seemed to... slide off. "Oh, you have _got_ to be fucking with me."

"You need to get closer?" Rufus suggested doubtfully, but Dean closed his eyes, trying to get to grips with his new senses, and when he reopened them, the entire fucking stadium was all but _glowing_ with Enochian sigils. Bloody hell. He should have known. Did Lucifer hand out a fucking textbook on the stuff recently?

"Son of a _bitch_."

"Sigils?" Sam sighed.

"Yes." Dean glowered at the stadium. "Whole wall's full of glowing angel-speak chickenscratch." 

"Keeps angels out," Sam explained to Rufus. "Like wards. Well, uh, since we got this far, I guess Rufus and I could head in, and you could stay here and keep the Locusts away."

"There's no way the two of you can handle Abbadon," Dean disagreed, and after a moment, Sam sighed and looked up at the sky.

"Okay, fine. Maybe we should head back, then. The Locusts have slowed down. We should be able to evacuate. At most, you can Angel Express small groups of people out to Bobby's place, or something. And then we'll scrounge up some real explosives and come back. Maybe you could teleport into one of the military bases."

"So the wall's the problem?" Rufus asked, thoughtfully.

"The sigils, sure." Dean groused. "Okay, Sam-"

"But you can put a handle on everything else outside it?"

"You've seen." Dean jerked a thumb over at the still burning hulk of the minibus. "Point?"

"Why don't you," Rufus knocked his knuckles against the hood of a squealing car, "Throw shit at the wall until the sigils aren't there anymore? I just saw you rip a street light with a gesture and javelin toss it at some Locusts just a few minutes ago."

Dean and Sam exchanged glances, blinking, then Dean glanced at the cars around them, and clapped Rufus on the shoulder. "Rufus... I really like how you think."

"Again, how in God's name did you boys survive for this long?" Rufus grunted, drawing a bead on his rifle and firing again, dropping another Locust that had lunged up too close. "Got to take my hat off to Bobby."

It turned out that with enough natural momentum, cars could in fact be flung at a high enough speed from a distance to smash through concrete, glass and steel, and also, promisingly enough, burst into flames. The process would have been exhilarating if not for the fact that the Locusts were now milling around, as though in confusion, which freed up both his brother and Rufus to do more backseat driving. 

"Maybe you should try and hit that pillar over there," Rufus pointed, then winced as the Mini plunged through an abandoned junk food stand, spraying buns and sausages and sauce. "Ooh. So much for that. I never did like hot dogs."

"What about right through the Gate itself?" Sam piped in. "Hmm. Your aim kinda pulls a little to the left, Dean. Just saying."

"Would you guys _shut it_ ," Dean snapped, "I'm trying to _concentrate_. Shoot some more goddamn Locusts, will you?"

"Well, we're going to run out of cars sooner or later," Rufus said helpfully. "And ammo."

Sam was squinting at the stadium walls, as though he'd be able to see the sigils if he only stared hard enough. "Why don't you just hit all the sigils? You just need to break the lines." 

"Thank _you_ , Captain Obvious, that was what I was _trying for_ before you guys got me wound up on target practice!"

"Kid, I've been hunting since you were in your diapers," Rufus stated severely, "You don't have to shout."

"Next time we are not taking any old people along as backup," Dean told Sam flatly.

"What about Bobby?" Sam was failing miserably at hiding his grin.

"Bobby's _allowed_." Dean threw another car at the building with somewhat more viciousness than was really necessary. It ploughed through what looked like a second floor bar and, after a pause, burst into a large ball of alcohol-induced fire. "Strike...!"

"Uh, Dean," Sam aimed his shotgun. "Look at the Gate."

A black, humming cloud of insects was boiling out of Gate Three, and as Dean watched in disbelief, it took shape as a huge black shadow of a man three times as tall as Sam, with a cloud of ragged, nearly formless wings stretching behind it.

"Well, well, well," Abbadon's voice was the gritty, humming roar of millions of locust wings. "A human, the Master's vessel, and the Michael Sword. Curious, _curious-curious_."

"Anytime now, Dean," Rufus hissed, wide-eyed. 

"I have seen some really ugly sons of bitches in my lifetime, but I don't think I've ever been this grossed out," Dean muttered. Beside Abbadon, the cars burst into flame, burning the clouds of locusts closest by, and Abbadon - Abbadon merely chuckled, hissing and laughing. Annoyed, Dean gestured, and a hole large enough to drive the Impala through burst open in Abbadon's chest, only to be mended again as more locusts seemed to flow in out of nowhere. 

"My t-turn," Abbadon whispered, and Rufus was abruptly flung back like a marionette, slamming into the wall of the newsagent outside the car park with a wet _crack_ , and Sam fell into a heap with a shocked cry of pain. "Stay there, Master's Vessel. You do not need your legs for now."

Fire. Insects hated fire, right? Dean backed away even as he forced the remaining cars forward, causing their fuel tanks to explode one by one. Abbadon snarled, high and thin, causing Dean and Sam to wince and clap their hands over their ears, as fire shot up the shape of locusts with a stench of charred insects. 

And then Abbadon began to laugh again, despite the fire eating through him. "Pity. I would have liked... to play a little longer..."

Blinking, Dean readied himself to shove over another car, only for Sam to shout, urgently, "Dean, _behind you_ -" 

And then there was a short, sharp burst of pain at his neck, and a wet snap-

XII.

Dean woke up in a groggy, nauseous sprawl on dusty concrete that smelled of rust, iron and... fire. Scrambling into a sitting position, he nearly over-balanced backwards into the ring of holy fire that surrounded him. So Abbadon had... no, wait. This was Bobby's shed. And sitting on a chair next to the fire, watching him expressionlessly, was _Sam_.

"Sammy?" Dean frowned, "What the fuck, man?"

Instead of answering him, Sam closed his eyes and declared, "Castiel? You can get Bobby over here now."

Dean pushed himself to his feet, staggering a little, and felt up over his neck. Still in place. Blinking, he stared dumbly as Castiel appeared, with a hand on Bobby's shoulder. Bobby looked grim in his wheelchair, and Castiel appeared, for want of a better word - disappointed. Wary, even.

"Sam, what happened? We were fighting Abbadon and-"

"And he killed you, Dean. After that... well, it's best that you watch. I got this out of the CCTV from the car park." Sam opened his laptop and typed something, then he turned the screen around to face Dean. 

The image was grainy and from a distance, closer to the newsagent where Rufus was lying in a broken heap, and kept flickering. A smaller, more human-sized locust shape was forming behind Dean as he was looking up at the fire, and as Dean watched, grimacing, it snapped his neck. So he hadn't imagined that. Another lovely incident to add to his collection of Things That Keep Dean Awake at Three in the Fucking Morning. 

"Wow. That's... more disturbing to watch than having it happen."

"Keep watching, Dean," Sam sighed.

On the screen, Dean's body crumpled, and the locusts flowed together, out of the fire and into the locust-man, swelling it in size as it padded towards Sam's crawling form. And then Dean's body jerked on the asphalt, and he righted himself, head twisting back into place, and he rolled his shoulders, clenching his fingers, and smiled, faintly, to himself. 'Dean' stretched out his right hand, and an angel-killing blade slid out of his sleeve.

"Son of a _bitch_ ," Dean breathed, as 'Dean' slipped forward and stabbed the Abbadon-shape upwards, through the ribs. Instead of turning and swatting him, Abbadon started to glow, jerking and convulsing, and then it exploded, with an unseen wave of force that tossed the closest cars aside and snapped 'Dean's' jacket and hair back, as though in the face of a gale, though 'Dean' stood his ground. 

Then 'Dean' disappeared, popping back into view next to Rufus, pressing two fingers to his forehead, and then when Rufus began to stir, he vanished and reappeared next to Sam, pressing two fingers to his forehead as well. The angel-killing blade slipped back up his sleeve, and abruptly, 'Dean' collapsed, which explained the stinging ache on his knees. _Son of a bitch_. 

"Michael took control," Castiel noted quietly, as the video fizzed with static. On the screen, Sam was scrambling to his feet.

"Okay, but I'm me again," Dean pointed out, warily, "And Abbadon is dead and presumably Rufus is still alive, so that's good, right? What happened to the other Locust monsters?"

"Melted after their boss was gone," Sam closed the laptop. "Dean... Michael didn't 'sub-let' his powers to you. He _is_ in you, right now. You've said 'yes', and either you've been lying to us all this while, or you haven't even realized that you've said it, and I'm not sure which is worse."

"So do you want to explain why I'm still me, right now?"

"Are you?" Sam shot back, flatly. "Can you cross the fire?"

Dean grit his jaw and stepped forward, only to come to an abrupt halt. It wasn't the fire that was the problem, but some sort of invisible... barrier. Hell. "Okay, so I'm literally 'angeled up', and I can't. Maybe Michael really is taking a vacation inside my head. But I haven't heard him, and as far as I'm concerned, if he wants to take over when I'm pretty much dead and smite some monsters and heal up my brother and my friend, that's fine."

Castiel shook his head slowly. "You should not have said that."

"Look," Dean snapped back, angrily, "What else do you want me to do right now, huh? Are you guys going to keep me here and throw me chips whenever I'm hungry? Maybe Michael took over for a bit, but I'm still here, and I don't feel him poking around in my head. So let me out before I really, really need to use the bathroom."

"Maybe you should sit there for a bit and think about your life choices, son," Bobby said gruffly. 

"And what does Karen think about my life choices?"

"Don't you bring her into this," Bobby glowered. 

"We're still on the same page here, guys," Dean struggled for patience. "The only reason why Death was willing to deal was because I have this extra mojo, remember? Otherwise you'll have had to put a bullet through her head a week ago, yeah? The deal's still the same. We unbind Death, get rid of Lucifer, and Michael gets the hell out of my headspace, or wherever he is right now. You want to know what I think? I think that what he did in Wyoming was actually a sign of _good faith_."

"Or at least, that's what he wants you to think," Sam pointed out.

"If he hadn't come out when he did, you'd have been in Lucifer's loving hands right now, Sam," Dean shot back, exasperated, "And Rufus and I would have been dead. Would you have preferred that?"

"Well," Sam grit his teeth, "No."

"Would any of you?" Dean glared at Bobby, who looked away, and Castiel, who also averted his eyes. "So let me out of here, damnit!"

"Dean," Castiel muttered, clearly uncomfortable, "Show me your wings."

"What?" Dean blinked, even as Sam asked, "Wings?"

"It's the one aspect of an angel that an angel can't hide, not even an archangel. It's like a... fingerprint," Castiel explained, "For the closest correlation." 

"Okay," Dean took in a breath, and the lights above him shorted out in fizzing bursts as he silently instructed the wings to fold open out of wherever they were. He inspected them over his shoulder, wiggling the right wing a little, experimentally. Oddly enough, they could spread over the flames, flight feathers dipping into the walls to either side of him. The insubstantial schtick that the wings had going was pretty cool, if he could say so himself. 

"It's still purely Dean," Castiel studied him closely for a moment before looking over to Sam. "You can let him out."

"Just like that?" Sam asked, surprised.

"If he was Michael, his wings would be different. There would have been three sets of them, at the least."

"Why the hell didn't you just ask me for this from the start?" Dean demanded, irritably.

"There were lessons that you needed to learn." Castiel replied calmly, even as Sam shrugged and picked up the fire extinguisher from its bracket at the wall. "That you are not invulnerable, and that you must in all things be careful in your... verbal representations. You can, ah, fold up your wings now."

"I'm never going to understand angels," Dean muttered, though he complied as Sam extinguished the fire.

"This doesn't explain how Michael got a shoo-in when Dean was out for the count," Sam pointed out, as he replaced the fire-extinguisher at the wall.

"I'll have to look into that," Castiel sighed. "In the meantime... Dean, I did say that you were not fit to face any of the more powerful demons. Until you can, at the very least, produce your own blade, I suggest that you refrain from pointless heroics."

"Or you could lend me yours," Dean retorted, still annoyed, as he stepped out of the burned circle.

"Mine would not have killed Abbadon, not when he wore that form. The archangels' blades are... different." Castiel noted wearily. "Far more powerful. And Michael's blade is the strongest of them all." 

"So what's Michael's game here?" Sam asked, as they started to head out of the shed. "I thought he told you that he wasn't going to interfere."

"I don't know, all right? But like I've said, you're alive, I'm alive, Rufus is alive, so I'm trying not to look a gift horse in the mouth, here," Dean growled. 

"In the Book of Revelations," Bobby said slowly, "Abbadon and his Locusts are meant to die. That's part of the Big Damn Script, even in the book that's commercially available. There's sort of a multiple step process. Michael becoming incarnate happens to be one of them, for your information."

"Well, he's been un-incarnated," Dean couldn't however stop a shiver from going up his spine. "And we still have most of the year. Angels don't break their word, do they?"

Castiel squirmed for a moment, then he nodded reluctantly. "We can't."

"There you go then." Dean declared, if with far more confidence that he felt.

Somehow, it hadn't quite occurred to him that the usual anti-angel contingencies were going to work against him. And as to that whole business of dying and getting re-animated... the way Michael had _smiled_... what the _hell_. Dean shuddered again. He couldn't quite shake the feeling that maybe, just maybe, he had missed something. He was going to have to have a long, quiet think about all of this. Preferably with a lot of whisky.

"So, how's the search going?" Dean asked, when they were back at the house and Bobby had wheeled away to talk to Karen. Sam had switched on the television set to surf through the news channels, searching for their next target. 

"I am uncertain," Castiel looked tired. "I believe that Gabriel may have made contact with Balthazar - certainly Rachel suspects this - but Balthazar denies this. I believe that he is being unnecessarily uncooperative."

"Maybe if you lock him in a circle of fire and threaten to torch him, his Great Leader will come out of hiding."

"And then he will kill us all," Castiel replied, after a moment's thought. "Rachel and I cannot fight an archangel. Especially if Gabriel becomes furious at how we have treated one of his favourites."

"Cas, I was joking." Dean yawned. "Sam, is Chicago still standing? I'm going to get me some pie."

"Karen made some peach cobbler while you were out." 

" _Sweet_!" Dean ambled into the kitchen, scooping up a bowl and a fork, then found the cobbler in question still cooling down over the griddle. "Karen is _awesome_. So where's the Scooby Gang right now?"

Castiel looked blank for a moment, then he said, tentatively, "You are referring to Rachel and Balthazar. They are still in Las Vegas. I came here only because Sam called for me."

"Okay," Dean started shovelling still-warm pie into his mouth, then when Castiel didn't move, he suggested, "Um, shouldn't you be going back to check on them? Especially if Balthazar's giving off asshole vibes?"

"I..." Castiel shifted his weight, pushed his hands into his trenchcoat pockets, and stared at the partly uncovered cobbler. "Dean."

"Hey, if you have anything more to report, just spit it out. I mean, nothing worse could happen to me today. I'm never going to look at grasshoppers the same way again, I've found out what it's like to get my neck snapped, was maybe possessed, maybe not, and woken up in a ring of fire with my closest friends staring at me like I'd grown fucking horns," Dean raised his filled spoon with arch insouciance. "So, go ahead. Hit me."

"I apologize for having to trap and test you." If Castiel stared any harder at the cobbler, it was probably going to implode. "I hope that you are not angry with me. I _am_ glad that you are still yourself. But I could not be certain of this until you had awoken."

"Cas, do I look angry to you? If I were you, hey, I probably would have done the same thing."

"That is reassuring." Castiel squared his shoulders, then he lifted his chin and took a step forward, arms held awkwardly outwards.

Startled, Dean took a few hasty steps back, holding the bowl protectively against his chest. "Uh, Cas?"

Castiel let his arms drop. "Rachel... suggested that this was a normal part of human interaction."

Castiel had tried to _hug_ him. Rather unnerved now, Dean replied, "Well... when two guys who aren't brothers hug, there's usually... only a sports reason behind it. And you don't do it when one guy is eating some pie."

"Ah. I misunderstood, then." Castiel seemed to deflate a little. "I will return to the 'Scooby gang'." 

"Yeah, er, you do that." Dean nodded cautiously, as Castiel vanished, then he glanced at the cobbler, at his bowl, then at the kitchen door, and shook his head slowly. _Angels_.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Animal totem wing theory only serves to stroke the ego.

XIII.

Day Fifteen of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo angel: practice, practice, practice. Dean glared at his right wrist, trying to imagine the weight of a blade, the cold steel of it, the shape. Still nothing.

"If I didn't know better I would have thought that you were having bowel problems," Balthazar drawled. They were both on the roof of Bobby's shed, or rather, Dean had come up to the roof to ~~hide~~ practice and Balthazar had annoyingly appeared out of nowhere, apparently with a mission to raise Dean's blood pressure.

Dean groaned, flopping down onto the corrugated metal. The afternoon sun was dying over the horizon, the light waning, and he shielded his eyes against it. "Can't you go back to Vegas?"

"I got banished here," Balthazar shrugged, with an expression of mock regret. "Rachel even threatened to start pulling my feathers. There were these terrible, terrible accusations about sabotage."

"Then you could go back to the big frat house in the sky."

"Can't do," Balthazar smirked. "I haven't been so entertained for _centuries_. Watching you try to do something that any fledgling could do from the get-go," Balthazar raised his right hand, and as Dean watched sullenly, a blade slipped out from his sleeve, then back in, " _Hilarious_. And you think that you can stop Lucifer all by your ownsies. It's adorable."

"Go and ask Bobby to assign you to some hunters, then." 

"I spoke to him for about five minutes and he told me to... 'sod off', I think the expression was. I had the distinct impression that he had stronger words in mind, but his wife was in hearing range. And your brother's asleep, or was pretending to be. That leaves you." 

"Great." Dean closed his eyes, took a breath, and concentrated on his palm again. Nothing. "Damn it! What am I doing wrong?"

"Well, my immediate guess?" Balthazar said dryly, "You're _not_ an angel. Therefore, no angel blade."

"I've got wings," Dean pointed out.

"Yes, about that," Balthazar sat up, shifting into a cross-legged position. "Show them to me."

"Isn't it rude or something?" Dean arched an eyebrow, though he pushed himself into a sitting position, facing Bobby's house. 

"Wherever did you get that impression?"

"Castiel keeps telling me that my wings make him feel uncomfortable."

Balthazar scrutinised him for a moment, then he grinned wickedly. " _Oh_. Yes, he would say that, wouldn't he." 

"What," Dean blinked, "So he was fucking with me all this while?"

"Oh no, I'm sure that he was telling the truth. Just that your dirty mortal brain probably took things the wrong way," Balthazar could really rock condescension. "You see, the reason why we don't walk around with our wings showing - other than the rather inconvenient way that they seem to occasionally short out mortal technology when unfurling - isn't, in fact, that they're... rude. Quite the opposite."

"Being?"

"Angels don't have souls. We're incarnations of functions," Balthazar paused for a moment. "Understand that this is all a massive generalisation, as your language is too crude to describe it."

"Yes, yes," Dean scowled. "Me monkey, you angel. Next."

"So our wings," Balthazar ignored the sarcasm, "Other than having the rather handy function of allowing us to shift through corporeal and incorporeal space and time, are also a blueprint of us as a function. They're an expression both of our personality, our effectiveness, our decisions... you could say that each angels' wings is an incarnation of what the individual angel is, has been, and will be."

"Okay-"

"So showing them to anyone else, even other angels, is usually an intensely private issue. Everyone's seen the archangels in their full form, at the beginning anyway, when it was all lightshows and hosannas, but often, the only time I'll see another angel's wings is if the poor bugger is dead, or..."

"Or what?" Dean prompted, fascinated, when Balthazar abruptly paused. 

"Well, I suppose, although it's not particularly a good correlation, the other time is if we're doing the angel equivalent of the horizontal tango." When Dean's expression froze, Balthazar elaborated impatiently, "Having sex?"

Dean's brain promptly derailed. "Angels have _sex_?" 

Balthazar rolled his eyes. "Not with that terribly messy, primitive business of fluids, potential diseases and all that noise, no. But it's a similar concept. And it's fun."

"I think my brain broke," Dean moaned.

"You have a remarkably insignificant imagination even for a human," Balthazar agreed blandly. "All right. Your wings. Go."

"Didn't you just tell me that-"

"Oh, don't bother about that," Balthazar flapped his hand dismissively. "I don't go for humans. Why," Balthazar smirked, when Dean hesitated, "Are you shy all of a sudden?"

"You show me yours as well," Dean growled, then he added hastily, "Not that I, uh, meant that to sound the way it just did."

"Fine." Balthazar shifted his shoulders, and below them, closest to the sheds, the headlights of the line of cars burst in tinkling shards. Dean concentrated, blinking, and now he could see the arch of pale, insubstantial wings behind Balthazar's shoulders, a pair of sleek ones, with a white bar over the top curves and black flight feathers, rather like a...

"You're a bloody _magpie_ ," Dean started to laugh.

Balthazar scowled, even as his wings ruffled and a few pinions turned briefly incandescent. "Also one of the more intelligent bird species, thank you. Your turn."

"Some of your feathers are kinda scuffed and frayed at the edges," Dean observed, ignoring the instruction.

"Yes, well," Balthazar said testily, "I've been kicking around for thousands of years. Fought in lots of wars. These old things have seen a lot of wear and tear. Some are scars." 

"The rest?"

"I don't have to tell you," Balthazar set his lips thinly, the humour in him abruptly gone. "Your turn, Dean Winchester."

"Fine, fine." Dean sucked in a breath, then he looked over his shoulder as his wings opened outwards. He had a bigger span than Balthazar, he noted, with a satisfied smirk, and when he looked back over, the angel snorted.

"Size isn't everything."

"Sure," Dean retorted smugly, and Balthazar rolled his eyes.

"You've got Michael's span, but not the three sets of gold and bronze eagle wings. Yours are... I think your kind call them 'osprey', if I'm not mistaken, and you don't have any actual colours. That's probably to be expected. Humans are a blank slate, what with all that free will, self-determination business." 

"Osprey?" Dean repeated, as he vainly tried to recall the few Discovery channel shows that he had occasionally flipped through on the way to the porn channels. 

"Means that you're a natural hunter. Few things make you happier than when you've got something in your sights." Balthazar mimed aiming a rifle. "You're reckless, you don't mind barging head-first into the unknown, like an osprey into the ocean. Supposedly, you're probably also single-minded and stupidly honourable."

"Well, thanks," Dean hazarded dryly. "You can tell all that from the wings? People change."

"The wings can change too," Balthazar said soberly, folding his wings against his back. "Lucifer's has, or so I've heard." After a pause, as the angel stared down at his fingers, he muttered, "Gabriel's, too."

"So he _did_ contact you."

Balthazar stared at him, his expression pinched and wary, then he sucked in a sharp breath and hunched his shoulders, looking away again. "It's going to be no use finding him, you know. He won't help you. If it's worth anything to you, I _did_ try asking. He doesn't care about anything but the war ending. He doesn't even care _how_ it ends. And he certainly doesn't care about you, or even about his own garrison. He's gone bloody _native_."

"Okay," Dean said slowly, and because Balthazar looked so dejected, added, "Thanks for trying. But if it's all the same to you, he's going to have to tell me that to my face. And then I'm going to kick _his_ ass back into shape."

Balthazar chuckled, though his wings perked a little. "Now _that_ I'll pay to see. By the way," he added, as an afterthought, "Your wings _are_ almost perfect. It's really rather unusual."

"I've done some questionable shit in my time, and that's not even counting the bit where I went to Hell," Dean noted dryly, "Stands to reason that your totem animal blueprint theory is kinda flawed."

"Maybe," Balthazar shrugged, "Or perhaps thousands of years' worth of 'totem animal blueprint theory' doesn't apply as well to humans. But if you were an angel, and you showed that pair around in Heaven, well-"

" _Balthazar_." Castiel spoke from behind Dean, and his tone was tight with fury. " _What are you doing here?_ "

"Overstaying my welcome, apparently," Balthazar tipped them both a mock salute, clearly unrepentant, and vanished. 

"Cas, he was being friendly. Amazingly enough." Dean felt disappointed - the discussion had been interesting. Assuming that Balthazar wasn't fucking with him, anyway. "Also, he's met Gabriel."

"Could you put your wings away?"

"All right, you know what," Dean growled, scrambling to his feet, "I like my wings, and I've just about had enough of-" 

As he turned around, his right wing passed _through_ Castiel, and the sensation was _electric_ , like a tiny, sparking surge running through every nerve ending in his body, tingling, intense, and not entirely unpleasant. From the way Castiel had abruptly frozen, wide-eyed, he supposed that the sensation had been mutual.

"Whoah. What was _that_?" 

"That... that..." Castiel swallowed hard, then he looked away, a flush climbing back up his neck. "That was exactly why you should have put your wings away. Accidents happen."

"Didn't hurt." Dean flexed his wings experimentally. "And the feeling's gone now. Nothing broken."

Castiel seemed to be debating with himself, his throat working and his hands clenching, then the angel burst out, "Why did you show Balthazar your wings?"

"Uh, he asked?" 

"I _knew_ it," Castiel muttered something darkly under his breath in Enochian, hands curling into tight fists.

"At least he answered some questions," Dean frowned. "What got you so worked up, Cas? Balthazar just wanted to talk." 

"Then why were his wings unfurled?" 

"Because I wanted to see them?" When Castiel muttered something more harshly in Enochian, Dean added, dryly, "Cas, this is not an... angel sex thing, all right? Firstly, I'm _human_. Mostly human. Anyway. No angel sex thing applies. Secondly, _Balthazar_? Seriously? And I've put my wings away, so you can calm down now."

"Balthazar has always been quite... popular," Castiel said defensively, though he visibly relaxed.

"Yeah, with his boss, I gather," Dean pulled a face. Sex thoughts, Gabriel's pint-sized vessel, and Balthazar, did _not_ mix well, but how else had Balthazar known what Gabriel's new wings looked like? "He's not really my type." At Castiel's puzzled expression, Dean prompted, "Male?"

"Oh. You meant that you are not attracted to the gender of his True Vessel," Castiel murmured.

"What else did you think I was talking about?" Dean began, but Castiel merely shot him a desperately unhappy look and vanished. 

What?

Later after a decidedly amazing roast chicken dinner, when Sam was washing dishes and Dean was doing the drying, Dean confessed, "Sam, I think I hurt Cas' feelings."

Sam didn't even stop soaping. "Huh. Again?"

XIV.

The other problem with allowing Rufus to tag along in the Abbadon hunt - near-death experience or not, word had gotten out to other hunters about Dean's situation, and now Bobby was not only having to man the phones, provide advice but also arrange Dean's newly, massively stacked request schedule. 

Oddly enough, Karen had risen to the occasion, taking over the phone management, bit by bit at first and then altogether, and once Dean and Sam had watched her chew out some hapless police officer over the line that yes, she was FBI Agent Millis, yes, so-and-so were some of her best operatives, and thank you for wasting her time, _good day_. Ouch. 

"This is crazy, Bobby," Dean protested, as he read through the list of locations and Bobby's crabbed notations. "I'm willing to provide _backup_ if anyone's way out of their depth, but this is like having to run all the hunts, everywhere, all at once! And we have our own problems. Big picture, Bobby."

"I've already filtered out stuff that people could definitely handle by themselves." Bobby looked tired and irritable. Apparently the apocalypse had coughed up a _lot_ of Books of Revelations-related monsters, many of which had not been seen kicking around for centuries, along with the vanilla hordes of ravening demons. 

"With great power comes great responsibility," Sam suggested, from where he was sifting through a crackling old book in the armchair. Something about a lion-headed beast of some sort. 

"Very funny, Sam."

"You're the man of the hour, Dean," Sam's lips twisted. "How's it feel?"

Dean narrowed his eyes, trying to parse Sam's attitude. The more calls that had come in for Dean, the more withdrawn Sam had started to become. It was like his little brother was regressing all the way back to the pre-apocalypse period, when he was still convinced that all the demon blood was definitely a good thing. 

Sometimes Dean wanted nothing more than to shake him until he rattled some sense into that thick skull.

"All right, you two," Bobby growled. "Dean, you're taking Sam on all those hunts. You've both been on enough runs with Castiel to know that things can go f... sodding batsh... batcrap when sigils and holy oil get involved. Also," he added, when Sam opened his mouth, "Sam's needed to watch you in case someone else gets into the driving seat."

Sam closed his mouth, and Dean nodded slowly. "Yeah. I suppose so."

"And the one silver lining of Sam being Lucifer's vessel? No demon's going to want to kill him. While you are on every demon's number one hit list." Bobby continued. "So as sad as it is, the two of you still need each other. Now can you both stop whining and help with the god-d... god-darned hunts? I've got friends dying out there!"

"This no-swearing thing is going to build up like a pressure valve, and then you're going to explode," Dean observed, fascinated.

"Get out of my house and over to Miami."

Annoyingly enough, Rufus was in Miami as well, and despite Dean's threatening stare had already fully misinformed the ragged group of hunters in the warehouse. Dean left Sam to get the low down on whatever the hell they were facing, and dragged Rufus aside.

"Rufus, I don't know if you'd noticed, but the last time we went on a hunt, you _died_."

"And came back," Rufus pointed out, unconcerned. 

"Didn't Bobby tell you what happened with Abbadon?"

"Seems one of your angel friends had to step in because you haven't figured out the healing thing yet?"

Admittedly, that was close enough, without having to go through the additional baggage of explaining potential angelic possession. "Well yes. But just so you understand, what Abbadon taught me is that I'm not exactly fully up to speed on this angel mojo business. And my angel friends aren't always going to step in, they're busy. So-"

"Dean," Rufus clapped in on the shoulder, "Before we met the giant locust monster, you flash fried _dozens_ of its friends, remember? Me and the Twins, we were going to start preparing for... well, either we were going to try and leave, and see how many we can save on the way, or we were going to die trying to stand our ground, but they weren't very good odds. So there was a hiccup with the big boss. Everyone still lived. Casper's still mostly standing."

"And there were those sigils," Dean added desperately. "Remember? I'm not a hunter cure-all, Rufus. You guys can't start relying on me for everything. Even when we... ran with my angel friend, we would only call on him if we really needed him."

"Do those guys back there look like we'll be relying on you if we didn't have to?" Rufus asked dryly, and Dean had to admit that he had a point there. The four hunters who had been going through their weaponry when Dean and Sam had popped into the warehouse via the Angel Express had looked grizzled and experienced... and very tired. "It's the end of the world, Dean. And I must say it's nice not to face overwhelming odds for once."

"Just as long as nobody tries to get used to this," Dean pointed at himself, "Because this isn't permanent, Rufus. I'm on a timer."

Rufus stared at him for a long moment, abruptly sobering. "Dean, you didn't... make a deal, did you?"

"Not exactly. And not with any demon. I've got a year to stop the end of the world on this borrowed mojo." 

"Or?"

"Or Michael takes over," Dean admitted grimly, "And you don't want that to happen. By all reports, the throw down with Lucifer? It'll quite possibly wipe most of us on this side of the world out."

"Ah." Rufus glanced back over his shoulder at Sam and the others, then he lowered his voice. "So you got that figured out yet? What to do?"

"We've shot Lucifer before, with the Colt. It didn't take. We've figured out what was wrong, though. So we're working on it."

"So either way, you're probably going to end up in some sort of smackdown." 

Dean shuddered. "Hope not." That hadn't gone very well for his future self, and he hadn't even fared very well against Abbadon.

"Either way, does whatever you need to do actually need your attention right now?"

"Well... no." As far as he was aware, Castiel and Rachel were still trying to pin down Gabriel.

"Then count all this as practice," Rufus waved a hand out to vaguely encompass the warehouse. "Because your aim is fucking awful, kid."

"If I ever have to take down the Devil by chucking cars at him, I'll keep that in mind," Dean said dryly, blinking. 

"And, hell, look at it this way. The more of us that you keep alive, the more of us that there are left to mop up any loose ends by the time you're done with stopping the apocalypse." 

Dean rubbed his palm through his hair. "Rufus, I didn't mean it that way. It's just that... you should have seen the number of calls coming in to Bobby's. It was crazy. Karen had to take over the phones. I want to help, but prioritizing is already going to lead to a lot of bad blood."

"Don't worry. I'll put the word out, after this. Utter emergencies only."

Dean glared. "I think that you 'putting the word out' was exactly what caused the problem in the first place, Rufus."

"We'll figure something out," Rufus retorted, clearly unabashed. "In the meantime, we've got to handle the Beast from the sea. Straight out of the King James version of the Good Book."

"You mean," Dean vaguely tried to recall the details, "Some sort of kraken monster?" Admittedly, fighting that would be kind of cool.

Rufus stared at him for a moment, then he snorted. "Kids nowadays. I give up."


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting angel bug sprayed, Dean realizes, is fucking annoying.

XV.

Day Seventeen of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo-angel: get banished. Come to think of it, they should have expected the anti-angel bug spray sooner or later. 

He had always been vaguely curious somewhere in the back of his brain as to exactly where angels went to when they got banished, and now Dean was thoroughly regretting forgetting to ask Castiel about it. Or more precisely, how to get the hell _out_ of it. 

Wherever he was, it was pitch dark, and the ground beneath his feet felt slightly uneven. The place smelled of absolutely nothing, which was unnerving in and of itself - and there were no sounds that he could hear except for that of his own footsteps. What was worse, the Angel Express didn't work, which explained why Castiel and the other angels always seemed to take a while to get back from wherever this was, and it was really fucking inconvenient as of now seeing as he had last left his brother and a few old fogeys just before a battle with a seven-headed monster...thing. 

Sam was never going to let him live this down.

Thankfully, a common consequence of the Winchester way of life was a tendency to find themselves in pitch dark places that they had no immediate idea of how to escape from, and as such Dean had a small torch in his inner jacket pocket, spare batteries, a lighter, and a box of matches. Dean fumbled for the torch and switched it on-

-and nearly dropped it on his foot. "What the _fuck_ ," Dean breathed, as he swung the beam around, illuminating a wide paved street before and behind him. 

Sloping structures with walls decorated with intricate murals scripted with more angel chickenscratch lined the street, each fragment in gleaming shades of semi-precious stone, and beyond the slate rooftops a huge domed structure rose in a dim shadow against the utter pitch dark of the 'sky'. If Dean squinted, he could make out the shadows of other, smaller domed structures and slender towers rising like fingers in the distance.

"Where the hell am I?" 

"Not in Hell, nor in Heaven," an all too familiar voice rumbled behind him, its timbre causing the ground beneath Dean's feet to vibrate gently.

Dean closed his eyes briefly, exasperated, and turned around. "Didn't I tell you how stupid the Aslan getup is?" Sam had once gone through a brief Narnia craze, when he had been about ten years old. Dean had thought all the hiding in closets that his little brother did had been cute, until he'd actually flipped through one of the books once out of boredom and had realized that it was just another form of escapism.

Michael tilted his massive, tawny golden head, as though amused. As before, in Dean's dream, Michael had taken the form of a giant lion, his shoulder as tall again as Dean, with a rather crowded three pairs of bronze eagle wings folded in a weird feathery blanket over his leonine back. Just like in the dream, Michael glowed with a faint, warm light, making the torch irrelevant. 

"I heard you."

"Actually, keep it," Dean muttered. "Male lions are sons of bitches who use smaller female lions to do their dirty work. It fits." At Michael's snort, Dean added, defensively, "I used to watch Discovery Channel when I was younger."

"That must have been a long, long time ago by the way your kind measures time," Michael noted dryly. "Now you seem to prefer observing men having carnal knowledge of exploited women."

Dean rolled his eyes. Angels were stalkers by nature. "My tv preferences aside, where the hell are we?" 

Michael glanced around them, "We are in a place that does not yet exist. This is what your prophets called 'New Jerusalem', I believe. The kingdom that was to come."

"You guys seem to have forgotten the light installations. But good work on the uh, wall pictures, though," Dean jerked his thumb at the mural to his left. "Colourful."

Michael sighed. "'And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is the light, and its lamp is the lamb.' Verse twenty-three, Revelation, Chapter twenty-one. I find it remarkable that you continue to neglect your Scripture. After all the trouble we went to make it the most published book in your world."

"The Big Damn Script seems to have left out the fact that God is apparently missing, or dead if you believe Raphael, and I don't see any sheep around-"

"Dean Winchester," Michael's long, tasselled tail lashed a little impatiently, "This kingdom is currently in darkness, because Revelation has not all come to pass. This is why it _must_ happen. So that Father will return to us all. God is not dead, nor is he missing. He will return when the time is right. Until then, New Jerusalem sleeps."

"Seems like your brothers don't all agree with you."

A giant lion with three sets of wings shrugging was one of the strangest things that Dean had ever seen. It was like an all body feather ruffle session. "I am the First among them. I will always have faith. The younger ones may go astray, but I alone see the entirety of our Father's plans."

"All right... do you know what I think? Because-"

"You _are_ me, Dean," Michael interrupted. "As above in Heaven, so below, on Earth. Do you know what makes certain bloodlines produce True Vessels? Because there is a sliver of myself in your bloodline. I have used your line as Vessels since the beginning. Two thousand years ago, I wore your ancestor's flesh when I drove the dragonkind back to Purgatory." Michael shook his massive head again and snorted. "He was not as difficult as you are."

"You are _not_ me," Dean growled.

"Am I not?" Michael rose to his feet, shaking out his wings. "We are both stubborn. We both hold our Father in the highest regard, even despite all evidence to the contrary. We are loyal to our friends to the end. We love our brothers above all else save our Fathers. And we will do the right thing," Michael began to circle him on silent paws, tail flicking gently from side to side, "Whatever needs to be done. Even if the enemy is our brother."

"Sam is not the enemy."

"Not yet, perhaps. But he will be. It is fated." When Dean clenched his fists, Michael murmured, "I do not want to be your enemy, Dean. I do not wish you any ill will. I healed you, your brother, and your friend, did I not? I killed Abbadon."

"Apparently because that was all part of the Big Damn Script."

"And returning the life of your friend? Where was it scripted?" Michael paused, and when Dean didn't answer, rumbled, "I have given you what you wanted. Power. Strength."

"Without the training manual."

"You humans," Michael chuckled, and a tremor ran through the ground, stronger this time, making Dean's teeth rattle. "I could give a man a glass of water in a desert, and he would complain that his cup is filthy." 

"Could get dysentery from dirty water." Dean quipped, his eyes narrowed. "Is this where you've been hiding all this while?"

"No. But I will not tell you where I have been _residing_ ," Michael corrected, with an irritated flip of his leftmost wing. "This is where angels are sent when that particular sigil is used. Admittedly, it's current usage as a banishing tool was... unintended. When Gabriel and I first created that symbol, it was meant only for the purpose of moving guardians to New Jerusalem should they ever be required here."

"And nothing works here?"

"This is... I suppose your kind would call it a pocket future. It exists only _in potentia_. Enochian is only a language here, and wings have no function because angels have yet to have a function in this area of existence. There is one exit. You will have to walk."

Michael had said that last part so fucking smugly. Dean grit his teeth. "I don't suppose you have a map?"

"The city is infinite. No map can exist. Any angel will know the way to the exit, because the pathways of New Jerusalem are seared into their minds." Michael tipped his head towards the distance. "I will, however, give you a hint. It is in the Temple Mount."

"The biggest domed building?" Dean hazarded a guess.

"As it were."

"You're stuck here with me, aren't you?" Dean could see the dome in the distance. The _far_ distance. "If you could turn into a car or something-"

"I am in no hurry to leave. You, on the other hand..."

"You're an asshole." Dean growled, frustrated.

"Ah, another character trait that we have in common." Michael sat down beside him, with a huff that might have been amusement. "Or so I have heard."

"Wait. You said that you and Gabriel created the sigil." Dean perked up. "How did you do that? Make up a spell?"

Michael snorted. "The agreement you have with Death is a good one. However, if you need a 'training manual' from me, Dean Winchester, then perhaps we should re-negotiate the terms of our agreement. Perhaps six months, instead of twelve?"

Dean glared at Michael for a long moment, and as the giant lion only watched him silently, he grit out, "I fucking _knew it_."

"Zachariah thinks that he can coerce you into doing what he wants," Michael observed, with another huff of amusement. "But I am you, in many ways, and I know that often, coercion tends to make us decide to do the very opposite. On the other hand, give a mortal enough power, and eventually, they'll hang themselves with it." 

Dean flinched as Michael nudged his back with mock affection, like a cat rubbing its cheek against a favourite human. The coiled strength pushed him forward a couple of steps. "Stay well, Dean Winchester. I've quite enjoyed watching your progress." With one last flick of his tail, Michael vanished.

"Son of a _bitch_ ," Dean muttered, into the gathering dark, and began to run.

XVI.

Sam jumped up from his chair when Dean staggered out of space and into Bobby's living room. "Dean!"

"Sam," Dean nodded, swaying gently on his feet, dizzy with weariness. "You're okay. What about everyone else?"

"Yeah, when you got bug sprayed, I called Cas and the others. Everyone's okay. The Beast's been taken care of."

"How long have I been gone?" Dean murmured.

"Half a week?" Sam was beginning to assume what Dean mentally termed Nerd Mode. Nostrils flared, shoulders forward. "Where did the sigil send you? How come you didn't just Angel Express back? Was it somewhere in Heaven? Cas and the others wouldn't tell me in detail."

"I've just spent however long it was running almost constantly," Dean staggered over to the couch and folded himself onto it. "I need to sleep, piss, eat and drown myself in whisky. Maybe not in that order."

Apparently, his body decided that sleep was a first priority, because he promptly passed out on the couch. Dean woke up into a dark and empty living room under a blanket, when it felt like his bladder was really, really going to burst, and staggered off to the bathroom in a sort of crabbing gait. When he slunk back to the couch, having washed up peremptorily, he belatedly noticed the covered bowl on the coffee table, a spoon, and a note.

The handwriting was unfamiliar: _Dean, I've made you a bowl of soup. Drink it before having any of the pie in the oven. Bobby has told me about your eating habits. If you have the pie only and pour the soup down the sink, I will know, and you will regret it. Please rest up and take care. Karen._

Karen was one scary dragon lady. No wonder she had Bobby whipped into shape. Admittedly, the thick, meaty soup was awesome, though Dean was too hungry to really register the contents of whatever he was that he was shovelling into his mouth. He had cut himself a large slice of pie when a flutter of wings and a sniff announced Rachel's presence.

"So you have returned." By Rachel's icy tone, Dean wasn't entirely sure if she felt that this was an improvement.

"If you're going to lecture me about having to be careful," Dean settled himself down in the couch, waving his spoon at her, "I think I've already learned my lesson. And by the way, that halfway place you guys built? Fucking creepy."

"Do not blaspheme," Rachel noted reproachfully, folding her arms. "You have made Castiel unnecessarily worried."

"Nice to see how he's the only member of the Scooby Gang who cares."

"New Jerusalem is empty save of banished angels," Rachel shrugged, "And no angel will harm the Michael Sword. I was not worried. And the city is infinite. Sending out a 'search party', as your human friends suggested, would have been pointless. We could have searched the city for you for years and never found you. The logical response was to wait for you to find the obvious exit."

Rachel was watching him carefully, as if waiting for him to admit something, and to fuck with her, Dean put on his best shit-eating grin. "So I suppose I was right that the biggest building in the place had to be good for something."

"It seems that you are capable of rudimentary logic," Rachel said coldly. "I profess myself surprised."

"All right," Dean exhaled noisily. "Did something else happen while I was gone to piss you off?"

"The salient matter did not occur while you were gone," Rachel noted, after a moment's thought. "It was just before."

"Okay, what was it?"

Rachel eyed him carefully for a while, then she drummed the fingers of her left hand briefly on her elbow. "Dean Winchester, what is Castiel to you?"

"Uh," Dean blinked. He had been expecting some lecture about the maybe-Michael-possession, or his continuous inability to produce an angel blade, or his attempt to take on the Beast without angelic assistance or something. At Rachel's deepening frown, however, he managed a quick, "Er, he's a... well, I think he's part of the family. He's a very good friend. Why?"

"But you harbour no romantic sentiments towards him whatsoever?"

Ah, so this was what it was about. No wonder Rachel had always been acting like Queen Ice in the few instances that Dean had ever met her in passing. Grinning slowly, Dean drawled, "Hey, if you want to go for him, go right ahead. Never met anyone who needs to get laid more than he does."

Rachel's glare seemed to turn even more frosty. "I had a mate. Her name was Ananchel. She was one of the first angels murdered by Uriel. Do not defile her memory with your crude suggestions."

Foot in mouth disease, thy name is Dean Winchester. "Uh. I'm sorry to hear that." When Rachel continued to glare at him, he tried, "If it means anything to you, we got Uriel."

There was a moment's pause during which Dean had a distinct feeling that Rachel was debating whether or not to smite him, then her expression softened a fraction, and she sat down on the couch beside him, ignoring how he instinctively scooted a foot away. "Vengeance is not something that Ananchel would have appreciated." She wreathed her fingers together and bowed her head, then added, "Castiel has always been one of the closest of my brothers. We of the Malakhim were made together, one of the last flights of our kind before God grew silent."

"Okay," Dean noted cautiously, wary of any more invisible conversation mines. 

"Before he was assigned to the siege of Hell, Castiel was... different. Assiduous in his duties. Determined. Constant. Certain. His voice raised in the praise of Heaven, his blade in its honour." Rachel was watching him again, if this time enigmatically. "Now he is a miserable creature plagued with self-doubt and the seven sins."

"Sister, I wouldn't go that far. I mean, Cas has his issues, but 'miserable creature'? All seven of the deadly sins? Really?" Dean chuckled, the sound dying away when Rachel scowled. "You're serious."

"I am always serious."

"Yeah, that seems to be a problem with you guys." Dean pinched at the bridge of his nose. "So what did you want me to do? Invite him to drinks? Because I don't know if you've noticed, but the end of the world is here, and we're kinda _all_ miserable creatures plagued with-"

"The original soul in his vessel has been returned to Heaven," Rachel interrupted. "A True Vessel was made as a container for a human soul. When that soul is gone, it can go from becoming a container to becoming an angel's prison. Slowly, Castiel is becoming effectively human. It is a particularly slow and painful way to Fall."

"So he needs his member privileges? I guess I could try and talk to-"

"At this moment, Castiel is drinking. In Vegas."

"Well, that's a popular human past-time and I would even recommend it, in moderation."

"An entire liquor store?"

"Uh-"

"I think that perhaps he was content with his lot before," Rachel was inspecting her nails again, which Dean had long registered as a warning sign. "To stand at the sidelines and receive whatever scrap of attention or affection that you might show his way. And then you made a deal with Michael, and it gave you wings."

Dean could feel his brain breaking along the edges. "Um, are you suggesting-"

"I think an equivalent analogy would be if you, Dean Winchester, grew for some unknown reason extremely attached to a cockroach-"

" _What_."

"-and then one day it becomes human."

"Okay, lady," Dean pressed his palm over his face. "That is actually a fucking disturbing mental image." Men in Black had assured him of that. 

"So you understand how many of us feel about it." 

"You guys think of us as _roaches_?"

"There are many, many of you, you cover the earth, you are remarkably difficult to kill, you have a tendency to spread filthy diseases, and you ravage your environment wherever you go."

"Let's leave the roach analogies aside so I can finish my pie," Dean muttered faintly, after a long pause, and then the rest of Rachel's words finally caught up with him. "Cas _likes me_?"

"He loves you," Rachel corrected primly, "He has killed for you. He has been cast out of Heaven for you; if you asked him to rip out his grace and Fall completely I think that he will do it. So if you cannot return the sentiment, Dean Winchester, seeing how you are in his debt, perhaps you should do him a kindness and tell him so. Arrange for him to be returned to Heaven. To serve in his original function again. Raphael might hate you, but I think that he will listen to you now that you have Michael's powers." 

"You mean, to get Cas to go back to being part of the douchebag gang that tortured him?"

"He was happier, before." Rachel rose to her feet. "Now his grace is rotting away, slowly, and for what purpose? A human who will serve Michael in the end, one who thinks of him as little more than an additional weapon to call upon whenever there were problems."

"That's _not_ how we think of him!"

"Isn't it?" Rachel asked, flatly. "Angels were made to love completely and utterly, Dean. It is a part of our function. If you cannot return the sentiment, then at least be kind." 

Rachel disappeared in a flutter of wings before Dean could voice his protest, and he blinked into the empty room, shell-shocked and no longer hungry.

Later, in the morning, when Sam stumbled into the kitchen to pour coffee down his throat, Dean muttered, still rather haunted by it all, "Sam, did you know that Cas apparently really likes me? Like... the whole nine yards sort of 'like'. Picket fences and everything."

Sam didn't even stop fiddling with the coffee maker. "Huh. You mean you've only just noticed?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In real life and in fiction, I'm really not a fan of the trope of other people trying to set up two people together, especially if the sentiment's unrequited. Personally I think it's intrusive and disrespectful to the person who isn't in love with the other person. Unfortunately I seem to have written myself into a corner in this fic (damn lol) so divine intervention was required to actually get slash happening. 
> 
> Regarding the 'zomg I just realized I'm gay for you' sort of plot point, which you guys can probably see crawling over the horizon, sexuality is fluid for some people, like for Leo in the fantastic movie Bedrooms and Hallways (I recommend it, if only for the Tom Hollander (Cutler Beckett) x Hugo Weaving). It's possible to identify as being straight but still form a sexual curiosity at any age. So it's not really a slash fiction sort of concept, although it is a pretty popular plot device, and unfortunately yet another thing that I probably have to use in this said accidental fic corner. Let me apologize in advance for the multiple cliches? Lol.
> 
> Long term readers (thanks guys) will probably note that I've already used this plot device twice before in the Assassin's Creed fandom. I'll try and see if I can put another spin on it so as not to bore you. In the meantime, thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Archangels are kinda like divas.

XVII.

Day Twenty-One, Apparently, of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo-angel: abandon priorities and go to Vegas. With no real plan as to what to do next.

Finding Castiel was the easy part. The angel was lying on a park bench, looking very much the worse for wear, but being a hangover connoisseur, Dean had been prepared for this, and he dropped a bottle of aspirin on Castiel's chest even as he sat down on the gravel in front of the bench, draping an elbow against the edge of the metal. A handy part of Michael's powers was not having to worry about laundry.

After a moment, Castiel stirred, and picked up the aspirin bottle, squinting at it. "Dean."

"You might want to take the whole bottle." Dean suggested. "And next time, you might want to consider not mixing every form of alcohol known to man all at one go."

"A bar person told me that people drink to drown their sorrows," Castiel, however, obligingly sat up and opened the pill bottle. "I am beginning to think that he was being metaphorical."

"Cas, if you hadn't been an angel, you probably would have drowned your sorrows, your liver and possibly everything else, maybe twenty times over," Dean pointed out mildly. When Castiel didn't answer, he added, awkwardly, "Rachel talked to me."

"I know. I asked her not to. But she seldom listens." Castiel swallowed the pills, coughed, and conscientiously returned the empty bottle to Dean, who tossed it in the general direction of the closest rubbish can. At the height of its arc, the bottle froze in the air, corrected its trajectory, and fell neatly into place. Angel powers _rocked_.

"It was, uh, a surprise."

"So I thought," Castiel agreed wryly. "Tell me, Dean. If I had a female True Vessel, would matters have been different? Would we have undergone carnal relations?"

This was possibly the most clinical discussion of sex-related matters that Dean had ever been subjected to. "I'm pretty sure that a lot of chicks would think that you're hot."

"I asked you, Dean."

"Well," Dean squirmed for a moment, then he sighed. "Okay. Maybe. Probably." When Castiel made a soft, wrecked sound, Dean added, "Aren't angels the same? If there are boy angels and girl angels-"

"Angels do not have genders," Castiel interrupted, if gently. "And there are no gender-specific terms in Enochian. Gender was ascribed to our names by humans, and we ascribe it to ourselves in turn in your language for the sake of communication."

There was a pause, while Dean struggled to process this new information and failed. "Uh. Okay. What's that like?" he finally asked, fascinated.

"Less complicated." Castiel watched him with those sad, sad puppy eyes. "Two thousand years ago my vessel was female. Her name was Livia. She was a general's daughter, fierce, wild and unafraid of the world. Unusual, for women of that time. I set her free after the war with the dragonkind, with my blessing on her House." Castiel settled back down to lie on the bench. "Perhaps I should not have done so. Matters may have been much easier with you."

"That's... er..." An extremely weird possibility, to say the least. Dean tried to imagine Castiel as a woman, some sort of blue-eyed brunette chick, and couldn't quite manage it. Maybe Balthazar was right about his imagination.

"Or perhaps... was this always impossible?" Castiel asked, quietly. "More so than the gender of my vessel, I am alien to you. If you could perceive my true form, you would call me monster. I considered removing my grace, like Anna had," Castiel added, "But I would then be useless to you: I would not know you, I might not even be reborn in a female form, and by the time I came of age, you might already have passed on." 

"You're not a monster, Cas." Tentatively, Dean reached over to press his palm over Castiel's, and after a moment's pause, the angel hesitantly squeezed his hand. "And I don't want you to Fall." The very thought was... uncomfortable. Cas was family, and Dean didn't have many of that left. He didn't want to lose him.

"It is a little late for that. The longer I stay in this vessel, the more I understand sensation," Castiel explained, "Sentiment. Confusion. Humanity seems to exist in a constant churn of... of doubt and questions and irrelevant thoughts and needs. It is overwhelming. Small wonder that many of you turn to substances to deaden it all."

Dean was abruptly, with an icy realization, reminded of Future Castiel, the one who smiled and laughed like a marionette, his eyes so flat and dead. Was this how it had begun? Not the war, but with Dean pulling away, but still asking Castiel to stay by his side, for his own purposes.

"Don't say that, Cas." He wondered how his future self had managed to bear it, watching Castiel's slow and inevitable slide to nothing. Whether he had cared. The thought was frightening. "I could speak to Raphael. Rachel suggested that."

"I know her very well." Castiel squeezed his hand again, this time more urgently, when Dean tried to retake it, then he seemed to force himself to relax. "And I know what she would have told you to tell me. I will not leave you."

And hell, if that didn't sound so goddamned _gratifying_. Someday, Dean would have to look real closely at his abandonment issues. "Just so you're aware," he hedged, cautiously, "The wings thing is meant to be temporary."

"I loved you long before you had them." Castiel reluctantly let go of Dean and folded his hands over his own chest. "It is a strange emotion. We all love our Father, but it is a different sort of love, one ground in our creation, our existence, written into what we are. This is more selfish, birthed from chance, and all the more painful in its intensity. For many of us, it is unbearable. It is why Anna chose to Fall, though she does not remember it," Castiel added quietly. "It is the main reason that angels Fall."

"Who did Anna love?"

"A priest... a missionary. He could hear angels. It was meant as a gift. I think he felt that it was more of a curse." 

"Everyone tried to kill him?" Dean suggested dryly.

"No. There was no war, not then. But many thought that he was mad." There was a pause, then Castiel added, more softly. "Anna was assigned to him. It was the beginning of the end for her."

Dean watched the cars pass slowly by at the other end of the park, as he tried to think about what to say next. The day was growing into the afternoon, and the park was empty; no one even gave them a second glance. Above them, thick white clouds were pushing carefully over the pale blue sky, and Dean idly wondered if Castiel could see that, the clouds and the sky and the sun, or if he saw nothing but structures. "Cas, do you want to go home? Back to Heaven?"

"No." Castiel's response was immediate.

"Really? Rachel said you were happier then."

"I might have thought that I was," Castiel shrugged, "But that was because I did not know what happiness was. Not then. You cannot understand happiness without first knowing misery. You cannot know joy without experiencing pain. So I do not want to go 'home', Dean. I may have understood pain, knowing you, but I have also found much joy. I will _not_ leave you."

"Well," Dean murmured, humbled by the raw fierceness of Castiel's declaration, "Thanks, Cas. I didn't want you to leave, either. I mean, I would miss you. And not because of how you help out or anything."

He wanted to add ' _because you're important to me_ ', but that would have been a sappy thing to say, and while Dean was still deciding on something less girly to tack on instead of it, in the awkward silence that ensued, Castiel sighed. "If this was like one of those 'Harlequin' novels, we would kiss. But I suppose that we have already done so."

"Wait. _What_?"

"Balthazar suggested that I research the subject matter of human relations-"

"Balthazar and his bullshit aside, what did you say?"

There was a pause, and then Castiel began to flush. "Ah. It was, admittedly, an accident."

An accident? Dean rewound his memory, and stared. The wings. The nice, tingly sensation. "Oh. _Seriously_? That's how angels kiss?" 

"The concept is similar. It is a touch of grace against grace. The pleasure is mostly spiritual." Castiel eyed him uncertainly, like he was wondering whether or not to try and Angel Express himself out of the conversation, and Dean recalled, abruptly and incongruously, standing in a chilly night, outside a brothel, laughing with a purity of joy that he hadn't felt for longer than he could remember-

So maybe, just maybe, there was something more to their 'profound bond' that he wasn't entirely up to exploring yet. A hell lot more. Dean knew that he was straight, and he was definitely sure that he wasn't... angelsexual, or whatever the term would be for this sort of thing. Castiel only looked human; he was far more than that - an ancient creature that had existed since before humanity had even known how to count time. 

But, hell, Dean was always up for new experiences, and it wasn't as though he wasn't curious. Bi-curious. Angel-curious. Whatever it was. The tingly sensation had felt _good_ , and everyone had the added benefit of still having their clothes on. It was practically PG-rated entertainment, and if it had the added benefit of cheering up Castiel... "I don't mind trying that again."

Castiel stared at him, wide-eyed, gaping like a fish for a moment before breathing, "You truly mean that?" He paused, then added, more suspiciously, "With me?"

"Yeah," Dean tried to sound casual, "I mean, since I've got the wings, I might as well use them for everything," he added, trying to keep the suggestion light, but Castiel shot him a look of such pure adoration that he swallowed uncomfortably. "Just... slowly, all right? No picket fences. This isn't a marriage proposal. This is me being curious."

Instantly, Dean sort of felt like an asshole, but Castiel didn't seem to care. "Whatever you want," Castiel gripped his palm, "Dean, this is more than I thought that I could have hoped for."

"All right, you two," Gabriel growled peevishly, behind them, "Seriously, are you guys doing this on purpose? Because I'm five seconds away from throwing up."

Dean scrambled to his feet so quickly that dark spots danced over his vision. The pint-sized archangel merely glowered at him from where he was leaning his elbows against Castiel's bench, cheeks pressed on his palms. 

"Ah," Castiel blinked, astonished. "Gabriel."

"Thanks for ruining the moment," Dean told him, and the archangel rolled his eyes.

"I know that Castiel hasn't been laid in... maybe ever," Gabriel concluded, as an afterthought, "But for fuck's sake, I didn't realize he was this awful at it. You're embarrassing me, little brother."

"We were looking for you," Castiel continued, rubbing at his eyes as though he was trying to focus, then he sat up sharply when Gabriel exhaled and reached over to press two fingers against his forehead. "Ah. The headache has ceased."

"First, you chase me around town," Gabriel scowled at him, "And then you drag one of my favourites into the equation to try your luck on the guilt trip front - not that it worked - and now you re-enact terrible soap opera in my favourite park. All right, Dean, Castiel. I give in. What do you want?"

"Firstly, I want you to teach me how to make an unbinding spell." What the hell, Dean could run with this. "Secondly, I want you to go back to Heaven and take your garrison back." 

"Do you want chips and a coke with that too?" Gabriel snapped sarcastically. "You can't _make_ me do anything, Dean. I don't know what happened to you to turn you into a semi-angel, but you're not Michael, and I'm far stronger than you are."

"I've figured out how to stop the fighting, Gabriel. But I need your help with that." Quickly, Dean outlined the situation with Death, and at the end of it, Gabriel sobered, fidgeting.

Finally, he muttered a gruff, "Huh. All right. Not a bad plan. I'll get some things, and then I'll meet you-"

"At Bobby's."

"Fine." Gabriel said sulkily, pushing himself away from the bench, then he hesitated. "Castiel?"

"Yes?" Castiel asked, warily.

Gabriel glanced between them both, then he smirked and made a distinctly lewd, jerking gesture. "Just put your hand down his pants. Works every time."

The archangel vanished before Dean could stop sputtering. "Your brothers are all assholes," he said finally, when Castiel got off the bench, looking self-conscious.

"You did mean what you said, didn't you?" Castiel asked hopefully. "It was not an act for Gabriel?"

"I didn't even know that he was there," Dean groused, "Or I would have punched him in the face _first_." 

"You would have broken your wrist," Castiel noted, though he smiled tentatively. "May I touch you?" 

"Um. Sure. Just, er, not the pants thing." Dean wasn't a prude by any measure of the word, but it was going to take a while to wrap his mind around the not-female (or male), not-human thing. If he did ever. Tingly wings was one thing. Everything else was going to need a shot of soul-searching topped up with a huge bottle of whisky.

Castiel, however, merely pressed a soft palm against his cheek, then stroked down over his shoulder to splay his hand over the brand on his arm, causing Dean to suck in a sharp breath. There was a... _rightness_ , there, like a shot of serendipity, like a piece of the world slotting into shape, and when Castiel dropped his palm, Dean shivered and almost made a sound of protest. 

"We should meet Gabriel. He has never been one for patience."

Dean swallowed, blinking, and fought the urge to rub at his arm. "Yeah. Sure."

XIX.

In the end, let it be known that Karen Singer and her white chocolate raspberry cookies were instrumental in saving the world. Dean and Sam watched in mute astonishment as an archangel of the Lord followed Karen around the kitchen in excitement, like a bloody nuclear-capable puppy, had to be stopped from eating the batter, and then later sat on the floor of the living room with a large bowl of still piping hot cookies with his eyes closed in bliss, perfectly docile.

"Your wife is magic," Dean told Bobby, who was sorting through various approximations of the Death binding spell that he had found through his less than normal sources. Apparently Gabriel needed to know what the original spell was before he could work an unbinding, which Dean supposed was logical. Kind of. He wasn't really a details person.

Bobby snorted. "You might want to get him to work on the spell before we run out of flour."

"Do you think any of us would get any cookies?" Sam asked facetiously.

"I'll smite you if you take any," Gabriel declared, without opening his eyes.

"I was just _wondering_ ," Sam, however, was smirking, clearly amused. "Dean, I'm beginning to think we could have solved a lot of problems in our past with a packet of Chips Ahoy."

"You mean, toss it in his direction and run?" Dean shook his head, edging around the table. Gabriel had sent the Scooby Gang away to look for a list of esoteric ingredients, and his earlier sulkiness seemed to have evaporated. "Uh, Gabriel? Do you mind starting with a spell primer, while we're waiting?"

"A spell primer? Sure, Dean-o. Chapter one, verse one." Gabriel noted, still going through the cookies at a speed that couldn't quite be healthy for anyone remotely normal: it looked like a speed race between throat cancer and diabetes. "You're human. Therefore, you're unable to make spells."

"But Death said-"

"However, I'm still an archangel, so I can make one if I want to." Gabriel continued, ignoring the interruption. "Still, seeing as the last time I made a spell by myself, you guys were still a tiny, tiny spark of possibility in a little mudfish crawling out of the ocean, I _might_ be out of practice. Therefore, more props than normal are required. Originally," he added, more loudly, when Bobby raised his eyebrows and Sam opened his mouth, "I had decided that it was too much trouble after all, and I'd just come here to tell all of you to get over yourselves, but-"

"Would anyone like some hot cocoa?" Karen popped her head briefly out of the kitchen, "Or tea?"

"Cocoa!" Gabriel perked up.

"Uh, no thanks," Dean said absently, but at Gabriel's sudden glare, muttered, "Tea. Please. Thanks, Karen."

"Um, me too." Sam added hastily, when Gabriel swung his glare over to him. "Thanks Karen."

"What was I saying?" Gabriel asked indistinctly, in a mouthful of cookies.

"Something about props?"

"Oh yes," Gabriel nodded benignly. "More props than normal. What you mortals term 'spells' are actually specialised instructions to the fabric of reality. Reworking the code, as you would say. There are certain items in Creation that bend reality a little. Usually when they're on fire. Makes working with it easier."

"So there was something to the Matrix movies after all?" Sam was, Dean noted sourly, noting down everything excitedly in a notepad.

"Ah, I was quite proud of those. Dabbled in Hollywood for a bit," Gabriel said happily. "It was a good metaphor, wasn't it? An Architect, another reality, mindless, humourless automaton functions looking after all you dreaming humans."

"You _made_ the Matrix movies?" Sam blinked, impressed.

"A few movies, here and there," Gabriel shrugged. "I didn't make them, I just put a few ideas in a few dreamers' heads. I was particularly fond of that one where John Travolta was an angel."

"You mean 'Michael'," Dean noted, dryly, having been forced into watching the popcorn flick once by some forgettable blonde chick. "Your brother still goes around in a lion suit with a full deck of wings, by the way."

"Yes, I don't think he ever got the joke," Gabriel noted mournfully. "One of my favourite forests 'mysteriously' caught fire after the movie was released. That's the problem with Heaven, you know. Nobody except a few angels in my garrison ever got my jokes." 

Seeing as Gabriel's sense of humour tended to run towards the viciously idiotic, Dean swallowed his grin. "Sucks to be you."

Gabriel scowled at him, as though analysing his words for something to take offense at, but at that point, Karen bustled into the living room with trays of tea and cocoa, and he settled down again. "Lady Singer," he said seriously, "How would you like to be a High Priestess?"

Bobby choked on his tea, but Karen merely chuckled. "You're very sweet. I don't think I've seen anyone appreciate my baking this much."

"Tell me who didn't appreciate your baking," Gabriel stated, his eyes narrowing, but Karen got a look at Dean's frantic gestures and somehow managed to keep an entirely straight face. Either Karen was a reincarnation of a Goddess of Patience or she hadn't taken Dean and Sam seriously when they had explained to her in hushed voices exactly what Gabriel was, and more importantly, what he was capable of. Dean suspected the latter.

"You have such lovely friends, Dean," she said brightly, with queenly composure. "Are they all staying for dinner? Including the three people who went away?"

Trying to imagine the Scooby Gang sitting down for a polite dinner took a long stretch of imagination. "Uh... well..."

"I do love having guests," Karen added.

"Then they will all be staying for dinner," Gabriel decided firmly, and ate another cookie. 

Dean exchanged worried glances with Sam, and his brother shrugged, holding up his notepad, upon which was scrawled: _Keep him happy until he's made the spell_ , and underlined it.

 _Karen's going to run out of flour_ , Dean mouthed back. 

Sam wrote: _Buy some or make some_ , which was how the Winchester brothers, hunters extraordinaire and True Vessels of a couple of archangels, ended up in Coborn's with a bloody shopping list nearly as long as one of Sam's arms.

"How is this our life?" Dean grumbled, for the third time, as they lurked in the baking aisle and tried to figure out where the hell the 'almond essence' was. "And what the fuck is 'muscovado sugar'? Sugar is fucking sugar, isn't it?"

"Just hold the list, Dean." Sam told him patiently, hooking a pack of brownish sugar crystals from the top shelf. "Here's the sugar. At least we're not paying for this, yeah?"

"I suppose." Gabriel had passed them a black visa card, which Sam had promptly goggled at. A damn credit card was a damn credit card, as far as Dean was concerned, up until Sam had explained how apparently you could buy just about anything in the world with a black one, after which Dean had surreptitiously copied down certain salient numbers from the said visa card. Just in case. "This list is longer than the list of stuff that Gabriel wanted the others to get."

"Stop complaining," Sam picked a small translucent bottle off another shelf. "Tick off the almond essence."

"You're enjoying this," Dean observed resentfully, though he obeyed.

"What isn't there to enjoy?" Sam asked rhetorically, "We're pretty close to a solution to all our problems, and all we have to do is buy some flour, sugar-"

"-rosemary, lemon thyme, persimmons, nutmeg... what the hell, I've seen _spells_ that were less complicated-"

"-and some other stuff," Sam ignored him, "Instead of having to haul ass through abandoned buildings fighting giant monsters or hellhounds or demons, so, yeah, Dean, I'm enjoying this."

Sam had a point. "Okay-"

"Also, it looks like maybe, just maybe, for once, one of your crazy plans is actually starting to work out." Sam hooked a large bag of all-purpose flour from another shelf, "And neither of us is bleeding out on the floor or watching our friends get disembowelled or anything. It's a nice change." 

" What do you mean, 'for once'?"


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crossroads demon deals are really a matter of form and substance.

XX.

Day Twenty-three of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo-angel: realize that the Winchester Curse of Nothing Being Easy The Fuck Ever is still going strong.

"We have almost everything," Gabriel was sorting through the extremely esoteric items that the Scooby Gang had dragged in. "We just need something that belongs - or belonged - to Death."

"'Just'?" Dean repeated. "What, you think he keeps a... a safe deposit box around, or something?"

"Oh come on," Gabriel snapped testily, having run out of cookies about half an hour or so ago, "Do I have to tell you everything? The obvious answer's in every bloody picture of the guy!"

"Black hood?" Dean hazarded, even as Sam sat up quickly and said, "The scythe!"

"Clearly Sam Winchester is the brains of this outfit," Gabriel was inspecting a tiny, blackened skull that looked disturbingly human. "Balthazar, this needs to be older. About a hundred years or so older." 

"All right." Balthazar, at least, seemed content, and as much as the bitching seemed to have increased, Gabriel didn't seem to notice it. Or maybe it was a normal mode of communication for Team Gabriel. Dean wasn't sure and didn't want to know. "Could have been more specific on that list from the start, boss."

"Shut up and get going, you," Gabriel flapped his wrist at him irritably, and Balthazar grinned, though he vanished. "Rachel, go and find out what happened to Death's scythe. I think Kali said something to me a while back about how it had gotten misplaced. Ask Azrael, he's obsessed with that thing and probably knows where it's gotten to."

"Yes, sir." Rachel also vanished in a flutter of wings. 

"How did he misplace his damn scythe?" Dean asked, a little irritably. Castiel was looking attentively at Gabriel, as though waiting for his orders, and the thought of it was somehow incredibly annoying. _Angels like taking orders from bigger angels_ , Sam's words echoed again in his head, and Dean grit his teeth.

"Lots of ways." Gabriel ran his thumb over Bobby's spell bowl thoughtfully. "This won't work. I need one of the Babylonian talmudic bowls. Aramaic for preference. One of those ascribed to me would be perfect, but not necessary. Castiel-"

"I'll get it," Dean cut in, when Castiel sat up straighter, "Babylonian bowl, right?" 

"You can't read Aramaic, let alone know what my name is in that script," Gabriel disagreed impatiently. "We're looking for efficiency here, Dean. And I have something else for you and your giant brother to do."

Castiel shot Dean a worried look, but then he vanished. When Dean looked back over at Gabriel, the archangel was smirking. "Don't _worry_ , Dean," Gabriel drawled, with arch patience. "He's not my 'type'. Also, Michael has this extremely broad conception of 'poaching', you have no idea." He paused, then he smirked again. "I suppose that's yet another thing the two of you have in common."

"Okay, I don't think that I want to understand the conversation," Sam observed from his corner, pulling one of his bitchfaces even as he did so. "But what did you want us to do?"

"How's things going on the binding spell?" Gabriel looked over his shoulder at Bobby.

"I've come up with a lot of rumours, but a grand total of nothing," Bobby grunted, looking irritable and exhausted; Karen had long retired to sleep. "I'm all out of ideas."

"I know how to get the spell," Gabriel arranged what looked like a couple of red sticks between a shiny blue one. "The question was what you were going to give for it."

"What," Bobby stared.

"Well, you could have, I don't know, said so _earlier_?" Dean demanded. 

"I was waiting until Karen went to sleep," Gabriel said primly. "Don't want her around bad company."

"Now see here, you-" Bobby began, but Sam hastily cut him off. "What do you mean, Gabriel?"

"You're going to call up a crossroads demon. Preferably in the basement. Or out of the house, filthy things," Gabriel noted breezily, as though he was discussing the fucking weather and not summoning a goddamned _demon_. "I know just the one. King of the Crossroads. Name of Crowley. Heard he's not a big fan of Lucy."

" _Crowley_?" Dean repeated. "Really?"

"Ah, I see you've already met him." 

" _Why_ are we summoning a crossroads demon?" Sam frowned.

"Because that's the magic of the crossroads deals," Gabriel carefully checked inside a small sackcloth bag, and tied it up again. "The demons have the answers to anything, once a deal is struck. Locations, spells, things like that."

"At the cost of a soul." Dean noted flatly.

"Precisely. So, the three of you," Gabriel waved a hand vaguely, "Should decide which one of you it'll be. Hurry up."

"I can't believe that _you're_ suggesting this," Sam seemed to be continuously convinced of the popular notion of an angel despite all overwhelming evidence to the contrary. "You're an _archangel_."

"Since you people don't have the spell anywhere in your books," Gabriel scowled at them, "There's no other way to get one, is there?"

"Could ask Death," Dean hazarded. "Maybe."

"Death's shackled to Lucifer, I don't think he'd be allowed. Alternatively, we could do the rounds of all the ancient witches and grimoires on this earth," Gabriel conceded, "But it'll take time, and word could get out. Once my brother learns what you boys are trying to do, do you think that he's going to take this lying down? You're all still squeamish? Look. One tiny little human soul, or the end of the world?"

"I'll do it," Bobby offered gruffly. "These sort of deals have deadlines, usually. And if you boys haven't figured out how to stop Lucifer by then, I suppose it don't matter."

"Bobby," Dean sighed, "You used to lecture us about this shit."

"This Crowley demon helped you boys with the Colt, didn't he? Maybe we could work out an easier deal," Bobby squared his shoulders. "Come on. We're going to have to get into the basement. You guys will have to carry the chair down the steps."

"Uh, I don't mean to criticize, but the basement isn't a crossroads," Sam pointed out.

"Oh, for crying out loud," Gabriel grabbed a piece of note paper and scribbled on it, then he balled it up and tossed it at Dean. "Use that over a heap of whatever you normally need to bury."

Dean opened the balled paper. It was a scrawl of a crossroads, complete with a random scribble of a lamppost. "You're f... screwing with me."

Ten minutes later, Crowley repeated the same phrase, albeit in its original terms and while wearing a nearly comical expression of horrified resignation, standing on top of a small mound of dirt. He glared at all of them, then up at the ceiling. "There's an _archangel_ upstairs. Dean, I _helped_ you, didn't I? I gave you that goddamned Colt! Why are you trying to kill me?"

"Yeah, well, it didn't kill Lucifer," Dean growled.

"How was I supposed to know that it wouldn't work?" Crowley barked, "And because you failed to kill Lucifer, I'm being hunted by my own kind! They burned down my house! They _ate_ my tailor! I've been hiding under a rock like a fucking _salamander_! And now I'm in a bloody basement, standing on a mound of dirt with a drawing of a crossroads that shouldn't fucking work that way, talking to Dean and Sam bloody Winchester with an archangel breathing down my neck!"

"Keep it down!" Gabriel's slightly muffled snap could be heard from up the stairs, and Crowley visibly flinched.

"Okay, Crowley, calm down," Dean carefully swallowed his grin. Schadenfreude was always such a bitch. "Look. We've figured out why the Colt didn't work. Lucifer bound Death to him. We've got to unbind Death, then we can try again. I need the binding spell for us to make the unbinding spell."

"Do you think that I can just pull something like that out of my arse?" Crowley seemed to develop a vaguely Scottish accent whenever very stressed. "Ask the nuclear reactor you have sitting _upstairs_."

"We did. He said you'd know. Crossroads magic."

"I wouldn't..." Crowley hesitated. "Oh. You... you want to make a deal."

" _I_ want to make a deal," Bobby said sharply. When Sam stepped forward and Dean opened his mouth, he added, "I wouldn't put it beyond Crowley to trade either of you guys to Lucifer or Michael to save his own skin."

"Dean here's already made a deal with _someone_ ," Crowley muttered. "You're radiating angelic power like a fucking _battery_. It's giving me a headache. So. Usual terms? I get your soul in a year in exchange for the spell that Lucifer used to bind Death? I hope your plan works. And if it does, you'd better shoot him good this time, boys."

Bobby opened his mouth, only for Rachel to abruptly appear next to Crowley, palm outstretched. "Hand over the scythe, abomination."

Crowley whirled, stepping back skittishly. "And who the hell are _you_? It's bloody raining angels!"

"He has Death's scythe," Rachel stated. "Azrael has confirmed this."

"Trade that in as well," Bobby said gruffly. "The scythe and the binding spell."

"You are making a deal with a demon?" Rachel glowered at them.

"Gabriel's idea," Sam cut in hastily.

Rachel glanced coldly at Sam, then at Crowley, then back to Bobby, then she folded her arms. "I am familiar with the magic of their kind. The nature of consideration is not important to catalyse the magic; merely that some consideration is provided at the invocation." 

Crowley glared, even as Bobby, Dean and Sam exchanged quick glances. "You mean, the one year thing doesn't have to happen?" Sam asked, tentatively.

"It is all in the wording. I am surprised that mortals have yet to consider this. Demon," Rachel addressed Crowley, "You will trade the binding spell that Lucifer wrought on Death, along with Death's scythe. This human here will trade you his soul, which you must return immediately upon your receipt of the same, intact." 

"Lady-" Crowley began, wide-eyed.

"Or I will find your bones," Rachel added calmly, "And I will burn them. Slowly." 

"That doesn't work, you realize," Crowley noted, though he was visibly nervous even as he said it, and Bobby assumed a speculative look. 

"We've got an archangel upstairs and a loaded angel right here and we're not afraid to use them," Dean smirked. "Cough it up, Crowley." 

"And this is good for you anyway, isn't it?" Sam added reasonably. "You want Lucifer dead too."

"What is this, good cop, crazy angel cop?" Crowley asked, looking injured. "If this ever gets out, do you have any idea what it's going to do to my reputation?"

"You can't be in worse trouble than you already are, Crowley." Dean pointed out.

"Because I stuck my neck out for you fucking clowns, and look what good it's done for me," the demon hissed. "Fine! Binding spell, and scythe, for a soul which I will return immediately, though I don't see how that's really good consideration since it's under bloody _duress_. And I'm only agreeing to this because I want Lucifer dead as much as you do."

"I will be checking the text," Rachel told him, "And if the wording is even fractionally different I will end you."

"Oh, yeah," Sam interjected, "And you can heal Bobby's legs, too." When Bobby looked sharply at Sam, Sam shrugged. "What? Cas can't do it, Balthazar and Rachel here ignored me when I asked them on the sly, and Gabriel's pretty highly strung as it is. Besides, healing is a pretty common crossroads demon deal."

Crowley looked agonised. "What is this, an all-you-can-eat buffet?" 

"And stop swearing," Bobby added, as an afterthought. "No swearing in this house."

"Do you people want me to hang myself while I'm at it?" Crowley whined.

"Also, we are _not_ kissing to seal the deal."

XXI.

Dean decided to kip upstairs to take a nap while Sam and the others were fawning over the spell and the scythe, the latter of which had been somewhat of a downer: instead of what he had imagined, it had really come up as something more like a small, rusty sickle.

When he woke up, the sun was creeping slowly over the sill in the loft bedroom, and Castiel was sitting on the opposite edge of the bed, watching him. Dean flinched a little in surprise, and rubbed a palm over his face. "Cas. Remember what I said about this?"

"You said that it was 'creepy'." Castiel nodded slowly. "But I needed to speak to you."

"It can't wait?" Dean rolled over to peer blearily at the bedside clock, which told him that he had only had about three hours of sleep. Typical. 

"It..." Castiel hesitated, then he fidgeted and murmured, "You seemed upset with me, earlier. When Gabriel told me to get a talmudic bowl."

"I wasn't upset with you, Cas," Dean groaned. It was possibly too early in the morning for this shit.

"Or you thought that I was incapable-"

"Cas," Dean interrupted, and because he hadn't yet had any whisky or coffee, added, "I might have gotten a little irritated at how you were all but sitting up and fucking begging for orders from the archangel, okay?"

Castiel assumed one of his patented, utterly bewildered expressions. "I was not..."

"Forget it, Cas. It was a stupid thought, anyway." Dean rubbed at his eyes again and managed to crawl off the bed towards the bathroom to wash up. When he padded back into the room to grab a new shirt, Castiel was still sitting in the exact position, though he looked determined now rather than confused.

"Dean," Castiel said solemnly, "May I touch one of your wings?"

"Uh-"

"The others are asleep. Rachel, Balthazar and Gabriel have returned to Heaven."

"...Really?" Dean blinked. "Wow. Where did the change of heart come from?"

"Preparations need to be made. When something as fundamental as a major spell is created by an archangel," Castiel added calmly, "All angels in creation will hear its birth, in different degrees. Lucifer will come." 

"Okay," Dean said slowly, after a long pause. He hadn't quite expected it to be so sudden. "I guess... that's good. Saves us the trouble of going looking."

"You are not ready to face him," Castiel looked away, fidgeting again. "Nor was Gabriel ever his brothers' equal. The chance of success is low, and the chance of all of us surviving, lower still. Therefore, before Gabriel creates the spell, I..."

"Calm down, Cas." Dean sat down awkwardly on the bed beside Castiel. He should have known that it wasn't going to be as easy as doing up a spell and going hunting. Of _course_ Lucifer would have known once something was different. "One thing at a time, all right? And we'll get through this. We always do."

"Counting on divine intervention is never a winning strategy," Castiel noted soberly, though he took in a quick, unnecessary breath as Dean concentrated and unfurled his wings, making the electronic clock flicker for a moment. "You're so beautiful, Dean."

"That's, uh, not something that you should say to another guy, for your information," Dean muttered, watching nervously as Castiel reached over.

"Why? It is accurate." Castiel curled his fingers gently over the insubstantial arch of Dean's left wing, as though it was solid for him, and Dean shivered, biting down a gasp. The sensation was _electric_ , like a warm spark tingling down his spine, all novel pleasure, and without thinking, he pressed the wing more firmly into Castiel's grasp. "The angels who look at you humans and think you inferior, they are the ones who are blind."

"Well," Dean always tended to talk more when he was nervous, and now he was torn between jerking away or melting, "What with having eternal life, teleportation, healing-"

"'Eternal life'?" Castiel repeated, with a faint smile, and tickled his fingers under the shoulder feathers, causing Dean to twitch and yelp. "Angels are not alive, Dean. Not by the way you would consider something to be alive." There was a sigh, and he added, "God did not think us alive. We exist as guardians, as cogs in a system, to preserve and protect a balance. Our powers are not gifts; they are necessary tools. The smallest human child, who feels sorrow, anger, love, envy, joy, who looks up into the sky and feels only marvel and curiosity - she is more alive than the best of us. She is a more perfect work than us. The soul that her frail body contains ensures this."

"We do not have moral codes," Castiel continued, as Dean shivered and tried to fight down a flush when splayed hands dug in briefly over the arm bones of his wing, "We have only our orders. No human conception of right and wrong, of pity, of sympathy. If a few hundred, a few thousand, a few million innocents have to die in the process of correction, we would have felt nothing as long as the system continued to run."

"You seem pretty alive to me, Cas." For the first time in his life, sitting on a bed with someone else, Dean wasn't sure what to do with his hands. "You broke ranks."

"For an angel, doing so is an aberration. The suffering it causes is immense," Castiel tickled up the primary feathers and smiled faintly when Dean jerked and squeaked. His body couldn't quite get a handle on the pleasure he was experiencing; it felt like it came out of nowhere, radiating through him like a sensation of contentment, something cerebral rather than physical. It was fucking weird, like slowly getting high on nothing at all. It was also, Dean decided, as he had to swallow another moan, when Castiel dug his fingers gently against the root of the largest feathers, rather _awesome_. "But I think that it is worthwhile."

"Cas," Dean growled, losing patience for the philosophizing, "Get your wings out." He was always an equal exchange sort of guy, anyway.

Castiel froze. "Are you certain? I am happy to just-"

"Now, Cas."

Castiel's lower lip indented as he chewed on it, as though out of nervousness, then he took in a shaky breath and closed his eyes. The clock fizzled, and the lights above Dean winked on and off, and then Dean could see them, insubstantial and, like Balthazar's frayed at the edges, feathers dipping through the bed and the floor, a solid black in colour, with a touch of iridescence. Beautiful. "A raven's," Castiel supplied, almost shyly. "Balthazar would say that it means courage. Introspection."

"You don't believe in his totem animal theory?"

"The theory is not his," Castiel corrected, "Though it is popular within the malakhim. I think it invites simplification. Dean-"

"What?" Dean reached over to press his palm over the nearest wing. It wasn't solid, and he could only feel it as a faint, not unpleasant static tingle over his palm, but Castiel hissed and looked away quickly. "Did that hurt?"

"You cannot hurt me, Dean," Castiel was blushing again, his hands folded tightly in his lap.

"Okay. Just let me know if I'm doing something wrong." Dean pulled one of his wings closer and brushed the longest feathers up against Castiel's, curious. 

Weirdly enough, he could see the feathers press against each other, like they were solid, feel at the back of his mind the sensation of a caress, warm and tender- and then there was a spike of pleasure, like nothing he had ever felt, that roared through every nerve in his body; it was like being consumed, _burned_ , Dean wasn't sure. He was dimly aware of Castiel's shocked expression as he shoved the angel down onto the bed and blindly kissed him, breathing noisily out through his nose as he pushed his tongue between parting lips and pressed his thigh between Castiel's legs, body working on automatic.

He could feel Castiel clutching at his back, then the angel moaned and crushed him closer, one palm twisting up through his hair and the other clenching over the brand on his skin, and Dean jerked up with a rough gasp, clenching his fists into the lapels of Castiel's coat, wings pressed flush together and stroking, twisting until he felt like he was drowning in one single, heady rush of ecstasy. Dean could see Castiel's wings starting to glow, becoming incandescent... Castiel whimpered as Dean kissed him again, then wailed as he rut up against his thigh, the angel's arousal a hard tent under his trousers as he loosened his hold on the back of Dean's skull and clapped his palm over Dean's eyes. 

Dean froze, puzzled for a moment, then the world outside of his eyelids flared a bright red, and he was vaguely aware that he was screaming something, maybe, his throat raw and hoarse as Castiel's grace folded over him, through him and every fibre of his soul, tearing away doubt, stripping pretence, wrapping over the core of him and _burning_ him, in a sensation beyond any conception of pain and far beyond any sensation of pleasure that he had ever known-

His brain probably folded and made him pass out at that point. When Dean came to, blinking and having to unstick his cheek from the shoulder of Castiel's coat, he was vaguely surprised to realize that the house was still standing. And that he hadn't come in his pants like a teenager like he thought he had. Well, that was a relief.

"I cleaned us up when you were out," Castiel murmured, and didn't seem to notice Dean's wince. Oh well then, so much for dignity. 

Castiel had folded his wings away, but Dean could still feel a warm tingle from where his right wing was pressed over the angel's outstretched left arm, and normally, especially with one of his one-night-stands, this was where Dean would pull away, with a quip and a wink, but he didn't move. Groggily, Dean tried a little soul-searching, and couldn't come up with any card that didn't read 'utter fucking contentment'. Who knew that crazy alien/angel sex could be so awesome? The angel's brilliant blue eyes were half-lidded, his lips bruised, and with the rumpled hair and the crumpled collar, he looked thoroughly fucked out. Hah. PG-rated entertainment could kiss Dean's ass.

"What the hell, Cas. You've been holding out on me," he managed to stutter. 

"I have not been..." Castiel trailed off when Dean started to chuckle, and then he conceded, with an awed tone, "I had not realized that it would be so good."

Dean recalled Gabriel's teasing in the park. "So I popped your angel cherry." He paused, and added, "And mine." Evidently, Dean was that awesome. When Castiel merely smiled at him, adoringly, Dean added, a little embarrassed at the intensity of it all, "Maybe we should go down and check on the others. Get something to eat."

And then it seemed that popping Castiel's angel cherry had suddenly turned the angel into a bloody minx, because instead of agreeing, Castiel leaned over and tugged at the lobe of Dean's ear teasingly with his teeth, and breathed, "I think that I can show you more." 

Huh. Breakfast was overrated anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess this qualifies for an M-rating? LOL. This is possibly one of the weirdest things I have ever written.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There really should be a rule about the use of anti-angel bug spray.

XXII.

Day Twenty-Seven of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo-angel: begin to really understand, maybe, just maybe, why angels gave up on the answering prayers schtick. 

"Is Gabriel taking this long with 'preparations' on purpose?" Dean hissed at Castiel. 

They were in the outskirts of some weird little town in Minnesota which had (perhaps predictably) gone batshit insane, and he was beginning to feel stretched thin, even with Castiel available to assist during the missions and help with... unwinding, afterwards. The unwinding bit continued to be awesome, though after the unfortunate demise of the water heater when Dean had tried giving Castiel a handjob, Bobby had now summarily banned them from doing it in the house.

They'd just spent the last _week_ while waiting for Gabriel to get his ass back down to Earth fighting fires across state lines, and the phone calls just kept on coming. Dean was tired, irritable, and at this point more than ready to just take on the Devil and get it over with. Either that, or smite Rufus. Because this was all Rufus' fault, and had nothing to do with Dean showing off against the Locust monsters. Right.

"Rachel told me that Gabriel was going to retake control of his garrison as well as Michael's. I suspect that Raphael and his followers may be resistant to the plan. Power shifts in Heaven never come easily." 

"Nice to know that humans didn't invent politics," Dean muttered. 

They were skulking in a mouldering cabin about a mile away from the town of Blue Earth, Minnesota, waiting for their contact to show up. Bobby had made some calls a day ago when footage of flayed corpses crucified to crosses, including women and children, had cropped up on the internet, and it turned out that the Twins knew someone who had a cousin who knew the pastor in Blue Earth. An amazing amount of hunting actually progressed on the law of degrees of separation.

"The EMF hasn't been showing any readings," Sam had arranged some of the crates together and pulled up the only non-wobbly chair in the cabin to conduct research. "And as far as Cas could tell, all the patrols that we've seen to date were a hundred per cent human. People do crazy things all the time, let alone when it's the end of the world, Dean. Maybe this one's more for the Feds."

"You think that whoever's been flaying women and children doesn't deserve a major asskicking?" Dean growled.

Sam sighed. "Dean, obviously they do. And we know how stuff works. Eventually, they'll get what's coming to them in the Pit. But we've been running on almost no sleep for a week, jumping all over the country. The authorities are still out there."

"We're here now," Dean pointed out.

"Yeah, we are, and... Dean, I feel as angry about this as you do. But we've never started on people. People do shit things, everywhere, all the time. But we hunt monsters, Dean. That town might be seven kinds of fucked up, but if we wade in there, you, me and Cas, even if neither of you used your powers, it's going to be a slaughter. You borrowed these powers from Michael to stop Lucifer, not to start passing holy Judgment on _people_ , even if they deserve it. We're not vigilantes."

"So you want to just sit tight and call nine-one-one?"

"We'll talk to the contact," Sam brought up another browser tab and did a search. "But from the looks of it, this town has always been pretty religious. And religious small towns sometimes go off the rails even when it _isn't_ the end of the world, just saying."

"So the contact that we're meeting might actually be the asshole who started this." 

"Dean-"

"Okay, Sammy. I agree with you, okay?" Dean decided, reluctantly. "You're right. I didn't borrow Michael's powers to go all Superman on people. We'll check out the contact. If there's no demon possessions or whatever in the town, we'll head out. If the pastor's the problem, we drop him off in the nearest police station and head out."

"And maybe punch him in the face," Sam conceded. "Just a little."

Pastor David Gideon was sturdily built, no-nonsense man with an air of confidence that probably made for great sermons. He did, however, appear pale, drawn and haunted, like he had aged abruptly over the last few weeks, and for all that he had a huge hunting rifle strapped to his back and a munitions belt over a shoulder, he clutched at the glass of water that Sam offered him like a lifeline.

"Matthew's an old family friend," Gideon began quietly. "He said that his friend, Ella, knew people who were in an... unusual line of work."

"That's us," Dean nodded, and because he was working on a degree of hyper-awareness caused by about an hour's worth of sleep, a double espresso shot and buttermilk pancakes, added, "I'm Dean and this is my brother Sam Winchester, and this is Castiel, an angel of the Lord." 

Gideon stiffened, staring at Castiel in disbelief, then back to Dean. "Mister Winchester, if you think that my situation is amusing-"

"Oh, I'm not joking," Dean cut in. "This is the end times, isn't it? Angels and demons everywhere. Turns out that they're not really big on tunics and flaming swords, that's all."

"Oh," Gideon looked down at his hands, suddenly nervous. "I feel that I should be... well..." 

"Cas isn't really into formalities," Sam assured him.

"My long-term association with the Winchester brothers has slowly excised any expectation I have ever harboured about being treated with an appropriate degree of respect by humans," Castiel agreed. 

"We tend to have that effect on people," Dean admitted, and Castiel returned him a serenely untroubled smile when Dean shot the angel a dirty look.

"Uh, all right." Gideon seemed to decide to soldier on, despite the cabin of seemingly weird freaks that he had just stumbled on. "It's my daughter, Leah. Some weeks ago, she started having visions. Of the future. She said that the angels were talking to her."

Sam and Dean looked as one to Castiel, who shook his head. "I know the names of all the prophets that were, are, and are meant to be, and Leah Gideon is not one of them."

Gideon exhaled in a painfully ragged sound. "That... that much should have been obvious to me. The visions were good, at first. She could predict the movements of demons. She taught us to fight them, with rock salt rounds, holy water, incantations in Enochian to exorcise the demons-"

"Incantations?" Sam cut in, beavering away at taking notes like the giant nerd that he was.

"Oh yes. Like this one." Gideon said a string of decidedly vowel-less words, and hesitated when Castiel let out a chuckle. "Perhaps I mispronounced."

"That's not a banishment phrase. He said 'You breed with the mouth of a goat." At Dean's arched eyebrow, Castiel added defensively, "It's funnier in Enochian."

"Weird angelic sense of humour aside," Dean rolled his eyes, "So the exorcism was fake."

"It looked like it worked," Gideon noted doubtfully. "You'd see this thick black smoke, rising from the mouths of the possessed. The demons became a manageable problem, with the whole town involved. And then-"

"Maybe we should cut to how everything went to hell in a burning handbasket," Dean suggested impatiently. His brain felt like it was ready to start crawling out of his skull, and he was beginning to entertain loving memories of the spare bedroom in Bobby's house.

"Leah's visions changed. Before, they were all about how to protect ourselves. Now they were all about what we had to do to be accepted into Paradise. At first she restricted pre-marital sex, drinking, and gambling. After that, she claimed that the angels were angry, that there were still sinners around us. She got folk riled up."

"So all those crucifixions - people did that?" Sam asked quietly.

Pastor Gideon's face crumpled briefly, then he stared at his hands. "I tried to stop them. But yes. People started murdering each other. And then... I've been trying to get help. But the phone lines have been cut, Leah outlawed mobile phones a week and a half ago, and the people I sent out never came back. Matthew's letter getting through to me was a stroke of luck as it was."

"What do you think, Sam?" Dean asked facetiously. "Fishy enough? Fake prophet? Demons reacting to fake exorcisms?"

"Something's definitely wrong." Sam scowled at him, and glanced over at Castiel. "Cas, could you take a look?"

Instead of vanishing immediately, Castiel glanced at Dean, and only disappeared when Dean nodded at him. Awkwardly, Dean looked back up at expressions of varying astonishment on Gideon and Sam's faces.

"You could give an angel of the Lord _orders_?" Gideon breathed. "Who are you?"

"What the hell, Dean," Sam ignored the pastor. "That's the fifth time this week."

"We had maybe a bit of a misunderstanding a week back which I haven't been able to sort out." Dean said wearily.

After Dean's admittedly catty statement about Gabriel and orders, Castiel had proceeded to assiduously seek Dean's approval on just about everything, which Sam had found hilarious at first but was now finding annoying. It was extremely awkward. Maybe cute. But awkward. And Sam never failed to pull one of his bitchy faces whenever it happened, as though his share in Castiel stock had just been drastically undervalued.

"A week back. That's when you guys did the..." Sam seemed to abruptly remember that there was a pastor in the room. "Fireworks."

"Yeah." Dean fought the urge to slap his palm over his face. "Let it go, Sam."

Sam, however, tended to hang on like a fucking terrier when something lodged in that way too high up brain of his, and he merely said, "Huh," and then five minutes later, added, "It was about Gabriel and his bowl, right?"

"I said let it go, Sammy," Dean growled. 

"Gabriel? As in, the archangel?" Gideon's eyes widened comically further.

"Huh," Sam smirked. "You know, there's something hilariously pathetic about your situation, Dean."

"Cas should have been back by now," Dean muttered sulkily, by way of attempting to change the subject, and as though the universe felt like punctuating his declarations today, there was the abrupt, distant klaxon of alarm bells. "Well, fuck."

" _Dean, wait-_ "

XXIII.

"This was a trap," Castiel observed, as a slender little 'girl' tossed Dean into the wall of the church, hard enough to crack stone.

"No shit... Sherlock..." Dean gasped, scrambling to his feet. Castiel was standing in a ring of holy fire next to the pulpit, and he looked rather calm, all things considered. It figured. Recently, Castiel's care-o-meter seemed to get riled up only by other angels, Dean's wings, and blasphemy. Watching Dean's ass get kicked by a little girl didn't seem to register.

"She is the Whore of Babylon," Castiel continued, when 'Leah' smiled at Dean and strolled slowly closer. "She's limiting our abilities."

"Tell me something I don't know!" Why did all the End Times monsters seem to have anti-angel coverage? Shit was starting to get _old_. Dean scrambled hastily through the emptied pews. At least the wings had been good for something else - unfurling them and willing them to reveal their shadows in the last lamps remaining had at least gotten all the God-fearin' folk spooked and out of the way. "Like how to kill her!" 

"You'll need a cypress branch," Castiel noted, as with a gesture Leah sent Dean ploughing painfully into the next row of benches, splintering wood.

"Where the fuck am I supposed to get one? I don't even know what a cypress tree looks like!" 

"The Talmud names it the _turanita_ ," Castiel was trying to be helpful again. Angels tended to either be amazing, or incredibly awful at being helpful. They weren't a middle ground sort of species. "The species we need in question grows in scattered warm temperate localities. It is a tall evergreen shrub."

"Not helpful, Cas," Dean picked up a bar of wood from one of the broken pews and swung it at Leah, who caught it and crushed the wood in her grasp. His shotgun was a twisted wreck near the door, and Ruby's knife was lost somewhere in the pews.

"Michael's blade should also work," Castiel added, almost as an afterthought. 

"In case you haven't noticed my track record with that thing-" Dean's words were cut off as Leah seemed to step with preternatural speed to his side, sending him crashing into another wall with a swift left hook. 

"Do you know what they say about little birds," Leah purred, cracking her knuckles. "One for sorrow," she reached Dean's side, and kicked him, the force lifting him up and sending him crashing into the pews, "Two for mirth. I do love picking off all the feathers. One by one." 

"As I was... saying..." Dean coughed, wiping blood from his mouth, "I can't make the blade. I'm _human_."

"You're not human, Dean, not right now. You're part angel. Do you know what angels are made of?"

"Sugar and spice and dicks?" Dean snapped, groaning and trying to push himself up to his knees. 

"Energy and faith." Castiel said quietly, as Leah padded ever closer. "You have the energy in abundance, from your soul, from Michael's powers. You lack faith. That has always been the problem."

"You say that... like I can just pull it out of my ass..." Dean gasped, as Leah picked him up daintily with her fists in his lapels and hoisted him up into the air. 

"Or Michael will take over again," Castiel continued, in that same, annoying calm, as Dean scrabbled frantically at Leah's wrists.

"Hey! You!" The door slammed open, and Sam barrelled through, raising a rifle. Leah jerked and dropped Dean when a round went through her skull, but she merely chuckled and turned around, cracking her knuckles again. Gideon and Sam looked bruised and scraped, but otherwise more or less in one piece, and behind them were a group of clustered, nervous people. 

"Get out of here, Sam," Dean called roughly, "We can't kill her. Need a... need a cypress branch. Call Gabriel... ngh!" 

Leah had turned around, grinding her heel into the fingers of his left hand, crushing them. "Stay there, little bird. I'm not done with you yet." She began to stalk towards the crowd of people, ignoring the shots fired into her, thumbs hooked into the hem of her jeans. "Hello, Father. Rallied the faithful, I see."

"Begone, demon," Pastor Gideon's eyes were streaming with tears, but his voice was steady, and he held out a cross in a nice but useless gesture. "Leave this place."

 _So much for faith_ , Dean thought, as the monster within Leah merely chuckled and took another step closer, and all of a sudden, he was angry, really angry, at the Whore, at the apocalypse, at all of the bloody angels, including Castiel, and most of all, furious at how pointless Gideon's death was going to be, trying to protect his flock with nothing but a useless symbol. If only Dean had a weapon. He could kill her. He _would_ kill her. If only he had a-

The touch of metal in his right palm was so cold that his fingertips felt like they were being _burned_. Blinking, Dean glanced over at his palm, which was now closed around the hilt of an angel blade which was like nothing he had seen before, malformed and asymmetrical, its edge blurred and shifting, painful to the eye. Still, a weapon was better than no weapon, and Dean clenched his fingers into a fallen pew, hauling himself upright.

Leah screamed as Dean shoved the blade through her back, angling up towards her heart, something shifting in her face, like a snarl in fast-forward, jerking and trying to pull free, and then an inferno seemed to rip through her from within, roaring out through her eyes and mouth in an intense blue flame. She was ashes when the fire was done with her, and Dean shakily picked up the blade, and looked down at his left hand. The crushed fingers were knitting quickly back together as the Whore's influence faded, and his hand was whole again.

"The fuck was this?" Dean wondered out aloud, staring at the blade, even as it flickered a couple of times in still frame and vanished. 

"That wasn't Michael's blade." Sam pushed through the crowd, tucking Ruby's knife away. "What was that?"

"The Whore of Babylon was destined to fall," Castiel noted quietly. "That was written."

"Yeah? I should bloody leave you in there," Dean growled, though he stalked over to the fire extinguisher. Castiel stepped carefully out of the circle once the fire was put out.

"You are angry. Why are you angry?" Castiel asked politely.

"We're not going to have this conversation in public," Dean told him. "Come on, Sam. Let's go home."

Sam glanced between Dean and Castiel, worriedly, but he nodded. "All right. We need to pick up our stuff from the cabin."

"Wait," Gideon pushed himself to his feet from where he had been kneeling before the remains of what had possessed his daughter. "You guys... you really do talk to angels. What do we do next?"

"Figure it out yourselves," Dean snapped. "The angels aren't fucking listening."

XXIV.

"She would have been slain," was the first thing that Castiel said, when Dean took the both of them to the beach that he had once followed the angel to.

Dean scowled at him. "A week ago you told me that I wasn't ready, and kept nagging at me to practice. This whole week it's like some sort of... major gear shift happened. Like you can't be fucked any more. What the hell, Cas?"

"Had she broken your neck like she was aiming to," Castiel continued evenly, "Michael would have taken control, and he would have killed her. The death of the Whore is one of the final steps in Revelation. For all our struggles, the final battle seems inevitable. Michael's trap has been a subtle one."

"His trap?"

"The death of one party tends to negate contractual obligations," Castiel noted heavily. "When Abbadon killed you, Michael could take over. Your body, after all, had become a shell at that point, one that was still bound to his grace. You reinforced this with what you said when he allowed your soul to return."

"But why would he do that? Why would he even bother letting me come back?"

Castiel sighed. "I have been thinking about this since Abbadon. Perhaps Michael realized that Lucifer's binding also prevents him from being killed by an angel blade. He knew that Gabriel would never help him, but that Gabriel might help you. Subtle spells, like illusions, bindings and unbindings, these used to be the work of Gabriel and Lucifer. I think he needs you, for now, so he has left you in place. I think he has outmanoeuvred us all on a game of possibilities and we have not even been aware of this. Even now, the whole Host of Heaven prepares for war, where before it was beginning to sunder, rife with in-fighting and betrayals. Gabriel's return has been good for morale." 

Dean mulled this over, jaw clenched, and a thought struck him. "Wait. You were _waiting_ for Michael to come out? This whole week?"

"I was going to plead with him to give you some leeway," Castiel said quietly, "Or at the very least, to arrange to spare your friends and family. Because this week with you convinced me that you weren't ready; you were barely able to use even a fraction of the full scope of Michael's powers. Because I thought that in the end, when Lucifer comes and kills you, when Michael takes over in the final battle that is written, afterwards, even if he lets you go, the failure will break you. I did not want to see that."

"No wonder you were Mister Fucking Cool while I was getting my ass kicked," Dean glared at Castiel, but the angel didn't drop his eyes. "You really think that I'm going to lose to Lucifer?"

"Yes, Dean. That was what I thought. Before you managed to produce a blade," Castiel added, when Dean bared his teeth. "Now I am uncertain again. You do have a way of exceeding my expectations."

"It's not Michael's blade," Dean concentrated, opening his right wrist, remembered the feel of the inconstant blade, the icy touch of it, and it slipped into his palm, the edge twisting jagged even as it did so. "I don't know what it is."

"It is not Michael's blade," Castiel agreed calmly, "And yet it is akin to his. My blade would not have killed the Whore. I suppose," Castiel added wryly, "That I should apologize. Each time I form an assumption about you, it tends to be rudely shattered."

"Yeah, well, you hang on to that thought," Dean willed the blade away, then flexed his wrists. "Sometimes you really piss me off."

"I know." Castiel stepped carefully into his personal space, and when Dean didn't pull back, pressed himself against him, hands stroking over Dean's shoulders, chuckling softly when Dean shivered as a palm brushed over the brand, rubbing towards his outstretched wings. "I could make it up to you."

"You really should stop reading those stupid books," Dean muttered, though he wrapped his arms around Castiel's waist and allowed the angel to kiss him. "You end up saying dumb shit that nobody does in real life."

The intimacy had been weird at first outside of an angel-style making out session, whenever he wasn't so high on pleasure that anything went, but he was getting used to it. Getting to _like_ it. Castiel's mouth wasn't soft like a girl's lips, and the angel was always demanding; it was different, for sure. A good sort of difference. And Castiel was a surprisingly fast learner, licking into his mouth until Dean was growing light-headed from anticipation. Lust. 

"You want to get your wings out now?" Dean growled, when they broke for air, Castiel mouthing down his chin to his throat and working his teeth against Dean's neck until Dean squirmed and gasped. 

"Soon," Castiel smiled at him, picking at the buckle at his belt. "I thought perhaps that I should first show you the other things that I have learned during my research."

Castiel wasn't going to...? Oh. Yes he was. Dean managed to swallow a whine when Castiel sank to his knees before him and undid his belt, tugging it out of the loops with the same, soft smile; nearly reverent, like he was unwrapping a gift. He did, however, shudder and groan when Castiel mouthed up the tent in his jeans, those gorgeous blue eyes half lidded and dark with want. He was about to have sex with an angel. Or technically, he was going to have technically _gay_ sex with a non-gendered angel hosted in a male vessel. 

Some part of his brain still thought that this was a 'fuck, no' moment, but it turned out that it was no longer on the driving seat of his libido, especially when Castiel glanced up at him, almost shyly, and tugged down the zipper of his jeans with his _teeth_. And as it turned out, after a bit of a false start until Castiel understood that teeth didn't have any place in sucking cock where Dean's preferences were concerned, he really, really did learn fast. Also, Castiel had no gag reflex. 

Dean would never admit it, but sometime afterwards, when it felt like he'd lost all sensation in his knees and possibly in his brain, he might have thanked God for Balthazar and his bullshit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates might slow down for a bit. Real life is catching up. :3 But the story should be ending soon, anyway.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Major fuck-ups tend to bite you in the ass when you least expect it.

XXV.

Day Twenty-Eight of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo-angel: man up and attempt the impossible - admit to his brother that he was wrong. Maybe. Just a little. 

"We could go to the Nevada Test Site," Sam was going through a map, looking for the least populated areas. "I mean, they test nuclear warheads there."

"So we might survive the apocalypse's final showdown only to contract cancer," Dean drawled. "Perfect. Why didn't I think of that?"

They were sitting in the shed with some sadly non-alcoholic and non-carbonated fresh lemonade (Karen and her increasingly intrusive health regime), going through one of Bobby's maps and trying to decide where Gabriel was going to create his spell. Assuming, Dean thought sourly, that the archangel hadn't already made up his mind on a location, which knowing Gabriel would be somewhere (a) bloody inconvenient and (b) close to a lot of cookies. 

"If you have any other ideas, let me know," Sam scowled at the map. 

"We've been arguing this point over for _days_ ," Dean slouched into his chair and yawned. "Point is, no Gabriel, no movement." Castiel had gone off to try and get some sort of status update or something, seeing as neither Gabriel nor the Scooby Gang were answering summons. He wasn't entirely sure how Castiel was going to do this without his membership card to Heaven, but the angel had seemed confident.

"They're not in trouble, are they?" Sam glanced up from the map, looking worried. "I mean, I get that power shifts take time, but none of them have been around for a week."

"Don't worry. Gabriel's an archangel." Dean shrugged. It was far more likely that Gabriel was being the _cause_ of trouble, actually.

"Yeah, but he's not the only one," Sam exhaled. "And we still kinda need him. Or at least, we need one archangel, and he seems to be the least dickish of the lot of them."

"Yeah, about that," Dean muttered uncomfortably. "About er, last night-"

Sam grimaced. "Dean, I really don't want to know about why there was sand and... stuff... in the shower this morning. I mean, you and Cas... I didn't really expect it, but, sure, you know? If you're both happy-"

"You're not going to give me the 'You're still my brother' speech while I'm trying to apologize," Dean cut in irritably. He had just spent the entire morning preparing to eat a huge, steaming pile of crow, and he wasn't about to let Sam's soap opera nattering ruin the moment.

"You are?" Sam peered at him. "Apologize? You? Are you running a fever?"

"Don't get used to it," Dean groused, and took in a deep breath. "I may have been wrong. About the Michael thing. All right? Maybe I shouldn't have given the son of a bitch the time of day. I thought that I could game the bastard. I didn't. So you were right. I was wrong. Shouldn't have cut any deals with anybody. Should've known better how that would turn out, given our track record."

"What brought this on?" 

"Seems that there were some loopholes in my agreement that you could drive a truck through," Dean admitted quietly. "If I die, Michael will take over. Apparently that might have been his plan all along. Use us to get Gabriel to play nice, and then wait for Lucifer to trigger the endgame. So when we face Lucifer..."

"If you die, the showdown happens anyway." Sam concluded, and pinched at the bridge of his nose. "I thought so."

"So we should have done this under our own steam." Dean nodded wearily. "Like we always have."

Sam glanced back down at the map. "Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows whether that would have turned out better? I mean, it's not that I'm saying that you didn't make a mistake, because I think that you did, but there's people alive now who wouldn't have been if we were muddling around just by ourselves. Like Karen. And all those hunts that we went on that we'd never have been able to get there in time to help with, if we just had the Impala for transport. I guess we'll never know. But there's no use beating yourself up over it. Not when we're so close to the end. Just, um, try not to die."

"Easier said than done," Dean pointed out, though he felt relieved. Seems like there wasn't going to be any 'I told you so's'.

"I told you so, though," Sam added, almost as an afterthought, and Dean scowled. "But you're still my brother. And as much as I hate to admit it, making major life mistakes despite everyone's advice kinda tends to be our sort of thing."

True. Sad, but true. "Yeah."

"Anyway," Sam finished his lemonade, "I was thinking, Cas can't pop up to Heaven to check on things, but you can, can't you? Maybe you could tell them to hurry up. Or if there's some sort of major fuckup that has bitten us in the ass, maybe we should know."

"Good idea," Dean decided immediately, and wondered why he hadn't thought of it earlier, which, on hindsight, should have been his first Clue. Whenever he immediately agreed with Sam on a course of action, it would naturally turn out to be the worst one possible.

XXVI.

For an angel whose wings were currently stapled to a wall full of angel chickenscratch, Balthazar was really fucking mouthy. "That was the worst rescue attempt ever."

Dean groaned, and spat out a mouthful of blood. They'd left him chained on a sigil that had been carved into something that looked like granite, and whatever it was had locked Michael's grace out, keeping him from automatically mending. He had a headache like a jackhammer, his ribs were probably cracked, and some of his fingers were broken. Teleporting in on Raphael while King Asshole had Gabriel's vessel strung up on some rack covered with runes had, on hindsight, not been one of his best ideas.

"Where's Rachel?"

"Gave them the slip. I thought that she might have contacted you. Guess not." Balthazar sighed. "I hope that she hasn't snuffed it."

Dean did too. He'd become rather fond of the overly serious and efficient Rachel. "Are you all right?"

"Do I look all right to you?" Balthazar growled. His magpie wings were flickering, as though jerking spasmodically through unreality, uncomfortable to look at, and his hands were shackled behind his back. Under his torn clothes, his skin showed a few rips, over his neck and his belly, which glowed a faint, disturbing blue, and his vessel's face was pale and drawn with pain.

"What the hell happened?" Dean tried to shift up into a sitting position, but the pain shuddered through his frame and he choked out another wet cough. Lying down had to do. "Cas was going on about how Gabriel coming back home was good for morale and everything."

"Dear Castiel has always been painfully naive," Balthazar muttered. "He, of all angels, should know better than to believe the official statement. But I guess we were pretty naive, ourselves. The boss wanted to retake control of his garrison at the least, before he starts with the unbinding spell."

"But?"

"But it turns out," Balthazar drawled, "That this month of Michael taking off to wherever has been fun for Raphael. He's been the undisputed king of the mountain in Heaven. Guess he grew to like it."

"I thought that you guys always needed to keep going along with the Big Damn Script," Dean noted, mystified at the sudden turn of events. He was _never_ going to understand angels.

"You know who's usually that interested in making sure everything goes along with the Script? Michael." Balthazar pointed at him. "He used to keep Raphael and everyone else in line. Always has. And now he decides to take a last minute vacation before the end of the world, and lo, the shit has royally hit the fan."

Dean rolled over onto his back carefully, wincing as he did so. "So, er, does Raphael actually have some sort of contingency plan for Lucifer?"

"How should I know?" Balthazar rattled his chained hands irritably and gestured around the cell. "I mean, it's not like he keeps counsel with me down in this rather accurate approximation of a sixteenth century human dungeon. As far as I know, he's gone completely bonkers. And it's your fault."

" _My_ fault?"

"Yours and Castiel's," Balthazar growled. "If you two hadn't dragged me into your harebrained plans, I would still have been sitting in the Isle sunning my wings right _now_. And the boss wouldn't have been caught," he added, more soberly, staring up at the ceiling, with a sigh. "At least he isn't dead. Yet. We'll feel it, if one of the Four dies."

"How come there are dungeons in Heaven?" Dean muttered, when the awkward silence stretched.

"Because Management decided to let in a handful of devout Inquisitors sometime ago," Balthazar explained. The angel's voice was growing shallower. "And because angels can't really shape Heaven, not anymore. We can't create things up here, only manipulate them. Only human souls can create."

"Hey," Dean noted worriedly, when Balthazar punctuated his sentence with a rasping gasp, "I can, uh, see your blue bits. That's not good, is it?"

Balthazar managed to roll his eyes. "What do you think?"

Not good. Well. When desperate... "Just checking, would Michael be able to get out of whatever it is that I'm sitting on?"

"My guess? No. That's one of the wards that he once created to temporarily house Lucifer while the cage was being built."

"Temporarily?" That was good, right?

"For about a century," Balthazar added snidely. "Give or take."

Damn. Dean closed his eyes, trying to think. There was no harm in asking for advice, right? 

_Michael_? he thought, as loudly as he could in his mind. He waited, but there was no answer. So much for contingency plans. 

Dean was carefully, and agonizingly, trying to put a finger back into shape when there was a faint buzzing sound, from his pants pocket. Frowning, Dean managed, with some false and painful starts, to pull out his cell phone, and answered it. "What the hell, there's reception in Heaven?"

"You're in Heaven." Castiel sounded weary. "I should have known. Are you in trouble?"

"Everyone's in trouble. Except maybe Rachel. Balthazar and I are in some weird medieval dungeon thing-"

"Juan Pardo de Tavera's Heaven," Balthazar supplied helpfully. "Lowest basement. Fifth cell from the left."

"We're really sitting in some dude's Heaven?"

Balthazar rolled his eyes. "I _told_ you. Inquisitors."

"I thought you guys just brought in the Inquisitors to do some interior decorating or something. What kind of sick fuck has a dungeon for Heaven?"

"Grand Inquisitors, perhaps. And actually, it's an entire castle, not just a dungeon." Balthazar had closed his eyes again, slumped against the walls.

"You got that, Cas?"

"I am continuously amazed by the amount of trouble that you can fall into when I am not watching you." Castiel sounded roundly pissed off.

"Save it, Cas. Balthazar's not in a good way. I can see his bits. The glowing blue kind. And it turns out that Raphael is an even bigger asshole than we all thought. He's got Gabriel. Apparently being the sole boss angel for a month made him break the dickhead sound barrier."

There was a sharp intake of breath, then Castiel said grimly, "I will try and come up with a solution. Please try not to get into more trouble in the meantime."

"I'm sort of chained down right now, Cas."

"Let me see what I can do." There was a pause, then Castiel added, almost shyly, "I love you," and hung up. Well. Er. Dean coughed, and hoped that he wasn't blushing or anything fucking girly. Talk about inappropriate timing, Cas.

"And on top of it all," Balthazar declared miserably, "I now feel nauseous." 

"Oh, shut up."

Dean wasn't sure how time passed in Heaven, staring at the stone ceiling, dazed from pain. Where the hell _was_ Michael? He'd always assumed that the archangel was sitting somewhere in his headspace, possibly going through his first-grade memories regarding Peggy Walthers and laughing himself sick. He'd always been vaguely afraid to think about it. But there was silence in his mind, and surely Michael had to be worried. Whatever Raphael had been doing to Gabriel, Dean was pretty sure that it wasn't for fun. And he was fairly certain that Michael, or at least, Michael-and-Dean, were going to be next.

"Why didn't Raphael just kill Gabriel?" Dean asked, out aloud, as he considered this. 

"I don't know." Balthazar muttered.

"You guys brainwashed Anna, once. Is that what he's trying to do?"

"Maybe. I doubt it." Balthazar, however, didn't sound too certain. Great. "Maybe he needs Gabriel to make the spell, too."

That made sense. If Raphael was also aware of Lucifer's pinky promise, then he needed Gabriel. "How long can Gabriel hold out?"

"I do not know, Dean," Balthazar said wearily. "Let me rest."

"Hey. Hey! You wake up," Dean snapped sharply. "Hang in there, Balthazar. Don't go to sleep."

"I'm not _dying_ ," the angel cracked open an eye, annoyed. "I'm not human. I don't bleed out. This will not kill me, it just _hurts_ like the bloody _blazes_. My grace has been wounded and it can't knit back together with this sigil at my back and my _wings_ nailed to the wall! So I'll prefer it, thank you very much Dean, if you would stop _asking me questions_ that I don't know the answer to."

Oh well, so much for friendly concern. "Fine."

"In fact, I would prefer if you had the courtesy to bash your head very hard on the..." Balthazar abruptly trailed off, shifting, and Dean lifted his head. 

To his astonishment, he saw a seam of light opening in the air, like a door, hovering a foot off the ground, and there was a sharp curse and the sound of a kick. The door jarred open a fraction more, and Rachel sidled out, looking as efficient as ever, one slender hand wrapped around a bloody _flaming longsword_. Blue flames licked constantly up the edges of the pale, incongruously paper-thin silver blade, the hilt wrought in gold and ivory in intricate whorls that looked far beyond mortal work.

Balthazar perked up. "Rachel! My favourite angel."

"You are both hopeless," Rachel growled, as she swung down, shattering Dean's chains, the sundered ends briefly glowing orange, as though molten. "Castiel got a message through to me. Roll off the sigil and you'll be fine." 

Dean gingerly crawled off the mark, gritting his teeth, and exhaled as he felt his fingers begin to set, his ribs beginning to knit. Rachel, in the meantime, had broken Balthazar's shackles, sheathed the blade at her hip, and was gingerly yanking the runed bolts out of his wings. Once the last one fell to the ground, Balthazar's wings flickered again before vanishing, furled, and Rachel bodily picked Balthazar up as though he weighed nothing, pulling one of his arms around her deceptively slim shoulders. 

"Where did you get that?" Balthazar gestured at the blade. "That's _mine_."

"You mean you stole it," Rachel retorted, half-carrying, half-dragging Balthazar towards the door, even as Dean took a hint and stepped through it-

-and into a massive and yet somewhat familiar giant greenhouse. Weird. Behind him, Rachel cursed, and as Dean looked around, she had pulled the obstinate door closed behind her. "Where are we?"

"We're in the Garden." Rachel glowered at the leafy fronds overhanging the path. "And since there's a mortal in it, it seems it's been Shaped. What is this ugly memory of yours?"

"It is the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. Lovely, in its own way." A short, wizened dark-skinned man was ambling up the path towards them, hands clasped together. "Oh my. I think your friend needs a lie down."

"Who's Morgan Freeman over here?" Dean asked curiously.

"That is the angel Joshua," Rachel glared at Dean briefly, even as she carried Balthazar over to a bench and dumped him none too gently on it, ignoring his whine of protest. "The Gardener, of the Garden of Eden. Show some respect. In any case, Balthazar should be safe here. No violence is permitted in the Garden."

Dean looked dubiously at Balthazar's slumped form. "Does he need like... angel band-aids, or something? Because his blue bits are kinda making me uncomfortable."

Balthazar moaned theatrically. "Rachel, please get the human to stop talking."

"You should return to Earth," Rachel told Dean, ignoring Balthazar. "Matters of Heaven are none of your concern."

"They're totally my concern," Dean disagreed flatly. "I need Gabriel. And even if I didn't, I don't think he deserves whatever that asshole Raphael plans to do to him."

"We do not need your help. I have been rallying Gabriel's garrison-"

"Uh huh, and how's that going?" When Rachel only held his stare for a moment longer before she glanced away, Dean concluded grimly, "Fun and games and spies at every corner, yeah? Face it, Rachel. You've only got me, Magpie, and Miniature Morgan Freeman over here." 

"I would prefer to remain neutral," Joshua stated with gentle reproach, but they ignored him.

Rachel glowered at him, jaw clenched, then her shoulders slumped. "You are right. I do not know who to trust right now. With Gabriel imprisoned and Michael missing, Raphael now rules Heaven. And he is far more ruthless than Michael ever was."

"And Balthazar seems pretty out for the count," Dean added. They weren't good odds. 

"Fuck you," Balthazar glowered. "I've had a very trying week, no thanks to you."

"He's done more than his part. Without the angelic weapons that he had stolen from the Isle, I would have been captured by now." Rachel pulled up her sleeve, to reveal a length of red rope that was looped several times around her wrist. At Dean's puzzled look, she elaborated, "This was used in a war on Earth. The Battle of Jericho. It is a shield against our kind. It allowed me to slip into your cell. I'll sunder it and give you a part of it."

"How did you find my stuff?" Balthazar demanded suspiciously.

"I've known you for a very long time, Balthazar," Rachel told him tartly. "And you are quite predictable. Still, I haven't yet found it all. Tell me where you hid David's sling. If we must fight Raphael, we will need it. My blade cannot touch him." 

"I don't have that one. It's been lost for centuries," Balthazar mulled this over for a moment. "The last I heard, it was on Earth, settled in another form. Jeremiah lost it on one of his field trips, I think; he copped a major shellacking over it from Raphael. There was a rumour going around that it's now in the form of a gun."

A magic gun? Now why did that sound familiar... "Are you guys talking about the _Colt_?" Dean cut in, incredulous. "That's David's sling? As in, David and Goliath?"

"You have it?" Rachel arched her eyebrows. "Hn. Convenient. Perhaps mortals _can_ be useful."

"It's with Sam. Should be in Bobby's house. I'll go and get it and come right back." Dean concentrated, and reappeared in Bobby's living room, startling Sam into yelping and dropping his laptop. 

"Dean?"

"No time to explain. I need the Colt." 

"It's over on Bobby's table." 

Dean nodded, crossing quickly over to the table, only for Castiel to abruptly appear in front of him. He managed a surprised, "Cas-" before the angel tugged him down into a rough, angry kiss, more teeth than tongue, ignoring his muffled squeak and Sam's hurried retreat.

"You're safe," Castiel was running his hands over Dean's arms, almost feverishly, as if he didn't trust his eyes. "Thank God."

"Thank Rachel, actually. And you, I guess." Dean set his hands awkwardly over Castiel's hips, uncertain of what to do with them. "You could sense me coming back?"

"I was in the basement, moving Gabriel's things into the panic room. I heard you speak to Sam." Castiel eyed him closely, then he exhaled. "You... you are returning."

"I have to." 

"Ah," Castiel's mouth was set into a grim line. "I suppose that it is necessary."

"Yeah." Dean's right hand had hooked around Castiel's waist, tugging the angel closer. When had it done that? "I have to go and fetch that pint-sized archangel. Can't let Rachel have all the fun." 

"I wish that I could be there by your side," Castiel murmured unhappily, fingers curled in Dean's jacket's lapels. "I _should_ be there by your side."

"Well, we need someone to hold the fort here," Dean noted, and when Castiel merely continued to watch him wretchedly, Dean clumsily leaned over to brush their lips together, abruptly nervous. It was a chaste kiss, and, Dean realized all of a sudden, the first that he had initiated outside of any sort of fun with feathers. From the way Castiel stiffened, as though he couldn't believe that it was happening, Dean supposed that the angel knew this too. "I'll come back," he whispered, feeling like a bit of a heel as he pulled back. "Promise."

"I will hold you to your word," Castiel informed him, squeezing his shoulders tightly, bruising him, then he stepped back, hands dropping to his side. "Be careful." 

"I think we're way past that being a possibility," Dean noted dryly, and concentrated. He reappeared in the Garden, Colt and ammunition in hand, and wordlessly passed it to Rachel. The female angel studied it for a moment, then she loaded it with ease, as though she had used a gun every day of her immortal life. At Dean's blink, she shrugged at him.

"The logic is rudimentary."

And to think that he had assumed that any sort of tech and angels didn't mix, given how Castiel tended to struggle with human technology. Or maybe it was just another aspect of Rachel's increasingly scary degree of all-purpose capability. Dean concentrated on his palm, and the shifting blade slipped into it, startling Rachel into straightening up and Balthazar into frowning.

"Where did you... ah. So you managed to produce a blade." Rachel concluded, with narrowed eyes. "And a powerful one. Perhaps this venture will not be entirely suicidal."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Dean told her dryly, if with rather more confidence than he felt. "All right. Let's go bag ourselves an archangel."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the beginning of this fic, I thought:  
> 1\. I don't think I will exceed 10 chapters! ;D  
> 2\. I'm going to try not to rehash Season 5.  
> 3\. I'm going to have some self-control and not write in every single one of my favourite characters. 
> 
> HMM. fail. uh. Hope you guys are still enjoying it so far.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you think you're all-seeing, and all-knowing, you become fucking terrible at guarding shiet.

XXVII.

Day Twenty-Nine of Dean Winchester becoming a pseudo-angel: realize that the angelic concept of 'security' is kinda... laughably non-existent. Or maybe it's a trap.

He considered this as Rachel beckoned him sharply down another stone corridor. They've already snuck past the sentries at the door, crossed over a room lined with sigils he'd never seen before, and slunk past two angels in suits staring woodenly out of a window. Apparently, for creatures beyond flesh and the five senses, angels tended to trust their angel-spidey-senses to such a degree that if you had a little bit of red rope around your wrist, you pretty much became invisible. 

According to Rachel, Raphael was probably expecting an army, not one malakh and one technical human, and so they had the element of surprise on their side. Dean had been _fairly_ sure that her statement had been kinda taking silver linings to a depressing extreme, sort of like a doctor telling a patient that she had contracted terminal cancer, but that was okay, because she didn't have enough money to cover a long-term hospital stay anyway. 

However, he kept his mouth shut. Rachel looked stressed, and it was probably not a good life decision to annoy an angry lady with a flaming sword.

"We are close," Rachel murmured, as they padded down a spiral stone stairwell, the slabs dense and cold under Dean's feet. "Prepare yourself."

"Do we have a plan?" It occurred to Dean that maybe he should have asked this earlier.

"Raphael hates you. Keep him distracted. I will attack the lesser angels, and make the shot when I can."

"Good plan," Dean grimaced. He was going to get his ass kicked. Again. In the name of the greater good. Apparently. "If you ignore the bit where he'd probably smite me the moment I get close, like the last time."

"The red cord should lessen the impact." 

"'Should'?"

Rachel glowered at Dean. "I have never used it for this purpose. I have also never attacked an archangel, nor have I ever disobeyed the orders of the hashmallim. This is _all_ new to me, Dean Winchester, and you cannot imagine how painful this week has been for me, for Balthazar, for Gabriel, so I would prefer if you keep your petty sarcasm to yourself."

"Whoah, chill." Dean held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I was just asking."

Rachel glared at him for a moment longer, then she looked away. "Try not to die."

"I would have thought that you'd prefer Michael as backup," Dean said, surprised.

"I would have, before," Rachel muttered wearily, "Before I discovered that power could turn even one of the remaining Four insane with greed. I do not know how Michael will react. But we need to free Gabriel and we cannot afford surprises. What Raphael is doing, what he intends, this much is wrong. I think Raphael will probably try not to kill you. He must be aware of your pact with Michael, or he would have killed you before this."

"That's an advantage, I guess. Maybe." Dean concentrated, and his blade pressed heavy and cold into his palm. "Okay. Let's do this."

Rachel didn't move; instead, she turned back to face him, and held out her left palm, her jaw set. "For as much as it may be worth; for as much as this surprises me to say it, I think that I am honoured to fight alongside you, Dean Winchester. You have courage. More than many of your kind; more than most of mine."

Dean shook her hand, somewhat embarrassed. "Try not to die either, okay? I don't want to have to explain that to Cas."

Rachel offered him a smile, a faint one, then she pulled away and started back down the stairs.

XXVIII.

Unsurprisingly, it was a trap after all. Rachel had gone for the cluster of lesser angels with the Colt in one hand and her angel blade in the other with a snarl, the moment she had seen Gabriel's broken vessel, suspended in the middle of the chamber on a sigil wrought in metal, clothes soaked through in crimson, and Raphael had merely smiled at Dean when he'd gotten rushed. At the last moment, the archangel sidestepped, grabbed his wrist, and reality had realigned, into a field, saturated with warm sunshine. Off to a side, a man was flying a kite, oddly oblivious to them.

Dean jerked at his wrist, then concentrated, trying to will Raphael's vessel into exploding, but the archangel merely smirked.

"I've locked Michael's powers, Dean." Raphael stepped back, and Dean glanced down at his wrist, blinking. Sigils etched in red and gold wrote themselves on his skin, sleeting out over his fingers and under his sleeve. "Locked him inside you."

There was a tension, under his skin, like a restlessness now, and a scratching ache to the back of his mind, like something frantically clawing to get out, and Dean shuddered, gritting his teeth, clenched his free hand. "Why?"

"He thinks himself clever. Anchoring much of his grace within you, making pacts with humans, unincorporating the rest of his consciousness to keep an eye on Heaven. Trying to entice Gabriel to return, with his absence. Trusting me to be willing to relinquish everything. The First among us was never quite as clever as he thinks he is," Raphael flexed his wrist, and an angel blade slid into his palm. "Never quite as strong as he thinks he is."

"Then why don't you fight him one on one?" Dean taunted, as they began to circle each other on the grass. "Sounds like you're running scared, resorting to tricks."

"Two birds with one stone, Dean Winchester. As much as I need to kill my brothers, to bring order to Heaven," Raphael explained, "I do not hate them. You, on the other hand, you I would gladly cut to ribbons."

"Some people would think that starting a civil war up here and getting rid of your strongest tokens isn't a good idea when you've got the Devil knocking at your doorstep," Dean suggested, watching footwork, waiting. He didn't like knife fights. Speed and skill trumped strength, and often luck, and he had neither of the former compared to Raphael, he suspected.

"I know how to return the Devil to his cage if I need to. And he is not as strong as he was before, since your brother refuses to accede to his wishes." Raphael retorted, and darted in. Dean jerked away, raising his blade, but it turned out to have been a feint; Raphael slashed left, then hooked his blade up, gouging a sharp line of agony up Dean's left arm. He scrambled back with a cry of pain, out of range, and glanced at the damage, expecting to see bone.

In a way, the pale blue light was worse. 

"You have no skill. No training." Raphael shook his head, as Dean grit his teeth against the pain, clenching his hand tight on his blade. "And yet your arrogance, and the arrogance of your kind, is astounding."

"Funny who's talking about arrogance," Dean shot back. "Let me guess. You're the middle kid, aren't you. Daddy gave the eldest kid, Michael, his counsel, the second kid, Lucifer, his love, and the youngest kid, Gabriel, his indulgence, and you, the third kid, never got any fucking much."

Raphael hissed, "You know _nothing_ , human."

The apocalypse was definitely brought around by bad parenting, Dean thought, exasperated. "So you try extra hard to prove that you're better than all the other kids. But you're not, are you? First kid and second kid are stronger than you, period. And the last kid runs away from home, so there's no one else to boss around. Poor _you_."

Raphael snarled, and lunged, but this time Dean was expecting him; he jerked to the side, winced as a downward slash opened up a gash over his ribs, but he managed to turn and jam his blade down, over Raphael's shoulder. The archangel howled, twisting free, panting, then he bared his teeth and wrapped his hand around the hilt of Dean's blade, dragging it free and tossing it aside.

"Missed my heart, human." Raphael raised his blade, then he hesitated, cocking his head. "It seems that the malakhim you brought with you has been rather more resilient than I had estimated."

"Yeah. She does that." So Rachel was alive. That was good.

"It is a pity. I would have preferred to prolong this." Raphael's left foot shifted back, a fraction, and before Dean could react, the archangel threw his blade. 

He felt the impact first, in his chest, making him stagger, and then the weight, then the sight of it, the silver blade protruding from his shirt, and _there was no pain_ -

The garden blurred and flickered, and now Dean was standing on a purely white expanse of absolutely nothing. He felt like there was ground, beneath his feet, but he couldn't see his shadow, and for a moment, he felt a sense of absolute vertigo. "What the...?"

"I do not have much time." A voice whispered from all around him, laced with pain, echoing, as though spoken from a distance.

"Michael?"

"Yes." There was a long, weary pause, then a murmur, "This was unexpected."

"You don't fucking say." So he was dead. They were _both_ dead. Bitter failure choked him, strangled his throat and made him dizzy from the ashen taste of it all, then he swallowed hard and asked, "Where are we now?" 

"This is a... halfway place," Michael seemed to be struggling for the words, his tone shadowed now in faint Enochian, the dissonance almost painful to Dean's ears. "It was the best I could make with what I have left. Dean, you must stop Raphael. You must stop Lucifer."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but I seem to be dead as well," Dean noted flatly.

"You are the Righteous Man," Michael continued to murmur, as though he hadn't heard. "Your hand writes the ending. Your hand decides the beginning. The slate... it must be wiped clean... that was what He meant..."

"Michael?"

"... He was never coming home..." Michael's whisper was thick with sorrow.

"Yeah." Dean hesitated, for a moment, then he exhaled. There was no real point in kicking someone while he was down, even if he was a douchebag. Especially since they were both dead. "Look, for what it's worth, I think you were dealt a bad hand, what with three asshole brothers and lots of annoying asshole little brothers, but you tried. I guess you tried your best. I guess you probably thought you were doing the right thing."

There was another pause, then Michael asked, disbelievingly, "You are forgiving me?"

"Yeah." Dean shrugged. "I forgive you. I mean, I still think that you're a douchebag. But I guess we are similar in some ways. I know something about absent fathers. So, yeah, you're forgiven. And wherever angels go when they go nuclear, I hope it's a better place."

There was another, longer pause, then Michael whispered, wryly, "Do you know what 'Michael' means, Dean Winchester? It is three words, in one of your tongues, 'mi', a question, 'who?', 'ke', or 'like, as', and 'el', for Elohim, or God. It is not a statement but a question. 'Who is God?', or, 'What is God?'." 

There was a ragged whisper, like a pained gasp, then Michael continued, "Names are intertwined with an angel's purpose. I used to think that mine was to preserve God's throne, to prepare for his return. I think now that I was wrong. None of us can find God, or know God. My purpose was to prepare you. To change you. To give you faith. Because salvation lies in the journey of questions, when we accept that there can be no ending. To know that there is no God, but to do God's work regardless, to keep your feet on the right path, that is true faith."

Now if that didn't seem awkward... "Well then, it kinda sucks that I'm dead too, isn't it? Or am I going to end up in one of the pocket Heavens? Or back in the Pit?"

"I think... I have one more act of Creation within me," Michael said hesitantly, and then Dean blinked as he held up his palms, watching sigils sweep up from his fingertips, twisting away Raphael's handiwork, knitting up the gash in his arm, the wound in his chest, and then the white nothingness around them seemed to flow, pouring into the sigils, searing him, burning through every nerve and cell of him until he was screaming-

"...wipe the slate clean..." he could hear Michael whisper, and then Dean opened his eyes.

Raphael was straightening up, apparently having just pulled his blade out of Dean's body, and his eyes opened comically wide as Dean kicked out his legs, sending him tumbling onto the turf. Quickly, Dean scrambled up to straddle him, grabbing for the hilt of the angel blade, and forced it down, right through Raphael's heart. 

"You... you were..." Raphael stuttered, blinking, then he convulsed, light spilling out from his mouth, his eyes, until Dean had to get up and back off, bringing up an arm. 

When he straightened up, the archangel was sprawled on the grass, the singed shadow of three sets of great wings burned onto the turf. Dean squinted, and for a moment he could see pale, interlaced threads, spreading out like a dome over the garden he was standing in, and other domes in irregular shapes, interconnected, in a massive, painfully intricate jigsaw piece, and... no. What had Michael done?

There was a flutter of wings, but Dean had already turned to regard the empty space. He _knew_ someone was coming, long before the sound had registered, and Rachel blinked at him as she arrived, Gabriel's bloodied arm pulled over her shoulder.

"You." Rachel said, warily, looking him over. "You are different." 

"Near death experiences do that to you," Dean joked, approaching them, though he stopped when Rachel bit down on her lip and backed away a step. "Rachel, it's me."

"Not entirely," Rachel frowned, though she allowed Dean to close in. "There is a... I cannot explain it... there is a compulsion on you."

"I don't know how to explain it either." Dean touched his forefinger and middle finger to Gabriel's forehead, and knew immediately what to do, the mending, the knit of energy and faith to lace back together, and abruptly, the archangel looked up, shaking his head, healed.

"What... _Dean_? How did you do that?"

The sense of _knowing_ was fading, growing dim, and then Dean had to fight the urge to rub at his eyes as it disappeared entirely, the pale network above him dimming back into sky. "I don't know. I think that was Michael's final apology to you. He's gone. All of him."

"I know. I felt it." Gabriel glanced over at Raphael's body, his expression pinched, something of ageless sadness in his eyes, then he pulled away from Rachel and straightened, looking to the side. Angels were arriving, first in clusters, then in throngs, peppering the field as far as Dean could see, watching them. "And here's everyone."

Dean clenched his fists, but Rachel quickly caught his wrist, and he relaxed reluctantly, even as Zachariah was nudged out of the throng, to edge towards them, pale but expressionless. "What are our orders, ha-elyon?" he asked Gabriel. "You are the last."

"Yes. I suppose that I am." Gabriel closed his eyes, turning his face up, towards the sky and another man's memory of an afternoon sun, then he exhaled as he looked back down again. "Prepare for war."

XXIX.

Dean hadn't realized how he could come to miss the bowel-clenching sense of corporeal displacement that came with being subjected to the Angel Express while fully human, but he did. Small things, stupid things that having Michael's grace had smoothed away or minimised, like a pounding headache, mild nausea, an itchy spot between his shoulders - Dean welcomed it all. It felt like he was learning how to be fully alive again. Granted, the timing was fucking terrible, but he still felt surprisingly good, given the circumstances.

Bobby and the others were having dinner - or at least, the humans were having dinner, and Castiel looked like he was just listlessly swallowing random portions of everything to be polite - and Sam started to his feet when Karen gasped. 

"Dean," Castiel got up quickly and circled to them, "I felt Raphael die. And Michael. How are you still...?"

"Michael did a bit of mojo just before he went," Dean explained, staggering a little when he stepped forward, and Castiel caught his elbow, steadying him.

"Gabriel now leads the Host," Rachel told Castiel. "We march."

"You're human again? All human?" Sam was watching him in concern. "Are you okay?"

"I feel like I've been run over by a truck, but otherwise, yeah. I'm fine." Dean said as casually as he could. "Bobby, did anything happen?"

"It's been quiet." Bobby glanced at Karen, who added worriedly, "You should rest, Dean. You look awful. I'll make something light for you when you wake up."

"I must return." Rachel nodded at Castiel, then she handed the Colt over to Sam, along with the ammunition pouch. "Gabriel will restore you when you are ready," she added, and vanished.

"I will take Dean upstairs," Castiel declared, and even as Dean tried to protest the method of transport, they reappeared in the loft bedroom.

"Shit, Cas. Give a guy some warning." Dean grumbled, even as Castiel guided him to the bed and helped him onto it, then sat down at his side, pulling at his sleeves.

"I thought that you had been slain," the angel said finally, quietly. "When Michael was slain. The thought was..." Castiel paused, his throat working, then he added, "The thought was unbearable."

"You didn't tell the others?"

"No." Castiel reached over tentatively to squeeze his hand. "I had hope. It was all that I had left."

"Come here," Dean decided, tugging on Castiel's hand, and the angel hesitated before awkwardly climbing onto the bed, allowing Dean to arrange him against his flank until they were snug. It was a bit of a strange fit, since they were both fully clothed and Castiel didn't seem to know what to do with his hands, but Dean curled his arm around Castiel's shoulders, and eventually the angel pressed his cheek over Dean's chest. The weight wasn't entirely comfortable, but the tension was bleeding slowly from Castiel's shoulders, so Dean didn't try to shift away. 

"I won't be able to touch your wings anymore, would I?" Dean asked, trailing his fingers over Castiel's back, outlining his spine.

"No. You are human again."

"Pity." It had been fun while it lasted. "Well. I guess that now you know how it's like, you could find another angel. The new Management will probably create less douchebags." 

That hadn't come out as casually as Dean had intended it to; Dean had felt a twisting pull deep within him, raw and prickly, but he ignored it. Castiel stiffened, then he was pulling himself up onto his arms, frowning. "Dean. Why would I find another angel?"

"To have the wings lightshow with?" Dean hazarded. "You're not going to hurt the vanilla human's feelings if you do."

Castiel exhaled loudly, ducking his head. "I have told you before, Dean. I love you. I've loved you even before you had that ill-conceived deal with Michael. To me, you are everything. There will be no other. And that has not changed." When Dean merely blinked at him, startled by the angel's forcefulness, Castiel added, somewhat more soberly, "But if you are no longer interested in... fornication with my male vessel... now that you are fully human again..."

"Hey. One thing at a time." Dean tugged at Castiel until the angel lay back down on the bed. "Slow down." He petted Castiel's shoulders awkwardly, until the angel had relaxed again against him. "Dying sort of gives you perspective. Each time, I mean," he added wryly, because his life was fucked up that way. "I'm going to die eventually, Cas. Again. Permanently. Maybe I won't survive Lucifer, or if I do, I'll be too slow one day, or maybe I'll become like Rufus or the Twins, and die of old age with my hand on a shotgun, whatever it is. I'm just saying, it won't seem like much time at all to you."

"I know." Castiel replied calmly. "But if I could have just that one lifetime of yours with you, even if it was only to be able to stay by your side, nothing else, I would be content."

"You really have to stop reading those books," Dean was sure that his voice cracked a little at the edges anyway. Damnit. He cleared his throat. "Seriously."

"May I kiss you?" Castiel asked, a little nervously, like he was expecting Dean to refuse after having just sucker punched Dean with a truckload of indefinable emotion, and Dean rolled on top of him, settling between the angel's spread thighs, Castiel's fingers first clutching at his arm, then trailing carefully up to his shoulders when Dean bent to slant their mouths together. Maybe one lifetime was _just_ going to be enough.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rule #1 of Dean Winchester: Nothing ever turns out as Dean expects it.

XXX.

Gabriel had handily agreed to Sam's choice of location, and Dean suspected bribery even as the angels transported them to the Nevada Test Site. A stone table had been set up in the sand, and Gabriel arranged the talmudic bowl on it, and then poured all the other weird odds and ends into the bowl in no apparent order.

He glanced up at Dean's curious stare. "Yes?"

"You're not going to say any mumbo jumbo?" Dean felt disappointed. 

Beside him, Sam looked visibly pained, as though he felt the lack of paper and pen like an actual wound, and around the table, the Scooby Gang watched the distance with the eerie, unblinking patience of angels. The Host itself was missing, but apparently they were in wait. Or something.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "This isn't a spell, Dean, it's the creation of one. The spell comes _afterwards_." 

"I knew that," Dean said defensively, and the archangel snorted.

"So, uh, Lucifer will show up? After you make the spell? Definitely?" Sam was holding the Colt - he had insisted on it. 

Dean had Ruby's knife instead, not that it was probably going to be of much use, on hindsight - it hadn't worked on Castiel, and it probably wasn't going to work on Lucifer. In fact, originally Gabriel hadn't even wanted to bring either of the 'vanilla humans' along at all, but then he had conceded irritably when Dean had reminded him of what Michael had said. 

Not that he was very sure how he was going to go around 'picking' the 'ending', but Dean needed to see this through himself.

"If you felt someone working a spell that would lead to your unmaking, would _you_ show up?" Gabriel asked peevishly. "Must you ask so many questions? Now be quiet. This needs concentration."

Gabriel pressed his palm over the bowl, and instantly, the ingredients within it caught fire, with a heat so intense that Dean had to look away. He busied himself scanning the desert, instead, restless. The red rope had long been confiscated, apparently because it had bad side effects on vanilla humans, and Gabriel had personally vetoed allowing Dean any of the other angelic weapons. The Colt was it.

He shaded his eyes and sneaked a peek over at the archangel, who was standing motionless, eyes closed, hand pressed over the flame. Unnerved, Dean looked away - and right into the eyes of the Devil. At his startled oath, Sam raised the Colt, and the angels drew their blades.

Lucifer, however, didn't move from where he stood, about twenty feet away on the sand, arms folded. His skin was gray, and pockmarked with red sores, but his eyes were narrowed and hard with anger. "Hello Dean, Sam."

Dean glanced quickly back at Gabriel, whose eyes were still closed, and he drew Ruby's knife, even though he knew that it was going to be useless. "Hi. Nice day out, isn't it?"

Lucifer tilted his head at them both, but he didn't move, and Dean reached out to grab Rachel by the shoulder as she took a step forward. "I want to know one thing," Lucifer said quietly, "How did Michael die?"

Dean had been expecting an ass-kicking to commence, or at least some sort of extended speech to Sam about the glories of saying 'yes', not a Q&A. "Uh..."

"It was Raphael," Castiel's tone was steady. "Raphael killed Michael."

"I was not talking to you," Lucifer didn't even spare Castiel a glance. "Dean, Sam. How did Michael die?"

"What he said," Sam gestured at Castiel. "Raphael killed Michael." 

"You say that like it means something, as though it explains everything," Lucifer mulled this over. "Why would he do that? Raphael has always obeyed Michael. So tell me again, Dean, Sam," Lucifer's voice dropped a register, and above, thunder crackled, dark clouds whirling overhead, throwing shadows over the hot sand, " _How did Michael die_?"

Balthazar flinched when Lucifer took a step forward, the ground rumbling beneath him like a beast awakening, and that was when the first angel attacked, flickering into existence behind Lucifer. The Devil turned, sidestepping the strike, and rammed the angel's own blade up through its head. Another flickered into existence even as he did so, then another, until it was more like a scrum, punctuated with flashes of Lucifer's face, lips drawn up in a bestial snarl of fury, while around him he treaded the seared dust of angels' wings into the dirt. 

Her face pale with grief, Rachel tried to step forward again, and this time, Castiel grabbed her arm. "We hold the line here," he declared, as ludicrous as it was to hear it, two point five malakhim and two humans holding the final line, but Rachel nodded grimly and exhaled. Above them, the sky seemed to crack open, rain pouring down in sleeting gashes onto the sand, lightning striking wildly and earthing itself on nearby shrubs and trees until Dean was almost deaf from the thunder. 

And still the Host kept going to their deaths. "Make them stop," Dean breathed, as angel after angel flared into light, then nothing. "Cas-"

"They are delaying him. Gabriel has not finished." Castiel's hand was clenched white-knuckled over his blade. "We must also delay him."

"There won't be any of you left if he takes any longer!" Dean snapped, even as he remembered the whisper in his mind, to wipe the slate clean, and he shivered. Surely this wasn't what Michael had meant. "We have to do something."

"Nothing's going to hurt him until Gabriel's done," Sam disagreed. "I don't like watching this as much as you do, Dean. But we're going to have to wait." 

"Where are the demons?" Balthazar asked, frowning. "Lucifer came alone."

Come to think of it, that was indeed weird. The small time demons wouldn't even make Castiel break out a sweat, but surely there were others like Alistair, and older things besides them. "Missed the bus?"

"It's nice how you'd find the puerile humour in things even at the end of the world," Balthazar growled, though the angel was grinning as he said it, shifting on his feet.

" _Enough_." The word was loud enough that Sam and Dean quickly clapped their hands over their ears, even as lightning lanced down from the sky. Around Lucifer, the angels fell back, into a tight circle, which he ignored, his hands wet with blood to the elbows. "Dean. Sam. I asked you a _question_. Answer me."

"Michael loaned me his grace for a year. Apparently he left most of it with me and used the rest to do some spying." Dean decided there was no real harm in talking. At least no one was dying. "Death sensed it and, uh-"

"I am aware that Gabriel is trying to unbind Death," Lucifer grit out. "Tell me everything, Dean."

And so he did - most of it, anyway, minus all the bedroom games with Castiel; he told the Devil about the deal, about his fucked up attempts to use Michael's powers, Abbadon, the Beast, about meeting Michael again in New Jerusalem, about both disastrous attempts at rescue. Through it all, Lucifer merely stood quietly, frowning to himself, and at the end, when Dean concluded with Michael's words, and Raphael's death, he stiffened. 

"I see," Lucifer said, finally, then he added, with his usual unnerving politeness, "Thank you, Dean."

"So, uh..." Dean glanced at the wary crowd of angels, "Were we going to head back to our usual broadcast of death and mayhem or what?"

Lucifer snorted. "Did you know who taught me how to bind Death, Dean?"

"I think I was under the impression that you pulled it out of your ass." God, he couldn't stop his mouth sometimes.

Lucifer, however, merely seemed amused, his lips twitching. "God taught me how to bind Death. That's why Gabriel is going to take some time. He doesn't have the guidance. Or the practice. It's difficult to create code that unmakes perfect code."

"Daddy made a huge mistake there, I reckon."

"Did he?" Lucifer asked, mockingly, "Have you read your Bible, Dean? The Devil doesn't die in the end. Oh, there's a lake of fire, and so on, but the Devil doesn't die. I'll simply be cast back down into the Pit. That's because this is the purpose that I was given. There must always be Heaven. There must always be Hell."

"So the 'paradise on earth' bit is just fluff?" Sam demanded.

"Paradise is just a long, winding tape of your favourite memories. Ask any of the angels. You can't have that on earth. Humans are such complex little tempests of constant wants and needs. You can't have a world without suffering, as long as you still have sentience." Lucifer drawled. "Paradise on earth is an impossibility, just because of the hunger of human nature. This... shakedown will just happen every few millennia. God will rewrite the Script through his prophets. It'll happen again. There were floods, the last time. Things were less complicated." 

"Certain key players are kinda missing now," Dean pointed out warily.

"Yes." Lucifer's expression twisted. "That should not have happened. I will never see my brother again, or cross blades with him. All because of..." Lucifer exhaled, again, and clenched his hands. "So this is what I propose. I'll allow Death to be unbound from me. But I want you to give me the Colt."

Sam growled, "Not on your life."

"You still have Gabriel's blade. That could hurt me," Lucifer smiled, like all the sin in the world. "Oh, come on, Dean. If I wanted to take the gun from the two of you, I could. The Host won't be able to stop me."

Dean silently willed Gabriel to hurry the fuck up. "No."

"Keep the bullets, if you prefer."

"No." 

Lucifer shook his head, slowly, as though amused. "Then close your eyes."

"Wha-" The rest of Dean's words were swallowed in a yelp as he hastily spun himself around, eyes squeezing shut at the sudden strobe of light. When he looked back, blinking away spots, the angels surrounding Lucifer were all heaps on the ground, the mud burned into overlapping shadows of wings. Above, thunder roared across the iron gray sky. 

Holy shit.

Lucifer took another step forward, tilting his head, then he smiled and took another. "Any time now, Dean, Sam."

Castiel and Rachel stepped forward instead, blades raised, followed by a grimacing Balthazar. Lucifer glanced at them, as though in curiosity, and the angels vanished. 

A cold weight settled in Dean's stomach. "Cas!"

"Don't worry. I know that you're both fond of them. I've merely sent them away for a while." Lucifer smiled, walking towards them, and shakily, Sam fired the gun, except Lucifer had already moved with preternatural speed to his side, grasping his wrist and wrenching the gun from his grip. "Stubborn, stubborn," he chided, even as he grasped Dean's arm, arresting Ruby's knife in mid air, and twisted, breaking it. 

He sidestepped around them, ignoring Dean's yell of pain, and as Sam lunged for him, he gestured, sending them flying away, gouging trenches into the muddy ground. Dean scrambled to his feet, but Lucifer had already reached the table. Instead of stabbing Gabriel, however, he merely waited, watching, until Gabriel abruptly sucked in a breath, the flame in the bowl burning a bright blue.

"Hello, brother," Lucifer said mildly, even as Gabriel blinked at him and took a step back.

"It's been a long time." To Gabriel's credit, the archangel didn't even flinch.

"Do we have to do this?" Lucifer asked, his tone pleading. "Michael's gone. Raphael's gone. I have heard Dean Winchester's story. There's only the two of us now. There's no need to fight. The war is pointless."

"And would you just return to the Pit and stay there? I happen to like this planet," Gabriel shook his head, determined. "And the people upon it. Unlike you."

"Why? You've seen what they do to each other. You of all of us have lived on Earth for centuries, among them. You've seen every venal, treacherous cruelty that they inflict on each other; the murders, the rapes, the thievery - they'll sell their own children or worse; they'll buy creature comforts for themselves when their brothers starve and suffer. Why protect them?"

"Because a lot of them try to be better," Gabriel clenched his hands, "And that's more than what I can say for us, brother." 

Lucifer stared at Gabriel thoughtfully, even as Gabriel drew his blade, then he smiled thinly, faintly. "I won't fight you."

"You'll have to," Gabriel retorted. "Even if you run, I'll find you. Until the world's rid of you, or you're bound again. I will protect them." 

"If we fight, you'll die, Gabriel. You could never best me, even before, when you were at your strongest. You were the weakest of all of us." Lucifer exhaled, ragged. "Michael and Raphael... we're the last of the ha-elyonim now, the two of us. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"You stopped being my brother a long time ago, Lucifer. And it was your choice."

Lucifer stared at him, but when Gabriel didn't blink, he sighed. "Then cast your spell, brother. Unbind Death from me."

"What?"

"We are the last." Lucifer glanced away, up at the sky, where lightning forked its way in a lattice, between the thick clouds. "I will not fight you. Michael is gone, Gabriel, and this is pointless. I am tired."

Gabriel didn't move, for a moment, then he drew his blade over his own palm, and began to draw a sigil in the air, painting blood onto nothing as though it was solid, first a circle, then a jagged line, surrounding it with smaller, whorled sigils, then a final triangle. When Lucifer didn't even blink, Gabriel pressed his palm to it, creating a flare of light, and the ground began to shake, the talmudic bowl jumping from the table and upending itself on the mud.

A slight, fussy-looking man in a shirt and a black jacket now stood to Dean's right, holding an umbrella. "Good _work_ , Dean. I profess myself pleasantly surprised, given your usual incompetence."

"Death?" Sam gaped. "Is that Death?"

"Don't stare. It's rude," Death chided Sam, and Sam flinched, looking quickly away. "Well then. I'll take my leave."

Lucifer spun the barrel of the revolver, inspecting it, then he dropped it on the ground, and walked towards Death. "Wait."

"You've tried my patience for a very long time, child," Death narrowed his eyes, and behind them, lightning struck the ground.

"I know." Lucifer held out his palm. "I'll ask for one last thing. Finality. I know that you can give it to me. Beyond any of God's plans. I don't want to be raised, or come back; I want to be removed from the chessboard altogether."

"You want to _die_?" Dean asked, astonished. "You could have said something. Or maybe, uh, just _waited_?"

"I want it to be my choice. By my hand and none other. Not by God's, nor that of the Righteous Man," Lucifer glanced pointedly at Dean, then back over at Gabriel, who had sheathed his blade, and was watching him grimly. "And I want to know that I won't be returned, by Him, or by anything else."

Death sniffed, then he inclined his head. "Very well. This I will do."

"Goodbye, brother," the Devil said quietly.

"Goodbye," Gabriel echoed numbly, blinking in the rain, as Death took Lucifer's hand, and that was how the war ended; in muddied ashes, in a downpour, the scent of old clothes and leather, with two shell-shocked humans, and the last archangel's lonely grief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lucifer's choice was inspired by Mike Carey's comics. 
> 
> I had to break up this chapter because the postscript got so long.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the loose ends, I has them.

postscript. bobby and karen.

"You _can't_ set up shop in _my house_ ," Bobby growled. "It's _my house_."

"I heard you the first thirteen times, Bobby Singer," Gabriel, archangel of the Lord, and sole commander of Heaven's Host, glowered at him from where he was sitting cross-legged in the armchair of the living room, a bowl of lemon cream cookies in his lap. Beside him, the four other angels seeking counsel also glared, clearly annoyed at the interruption.

"The light fixtures are busted! The telly doesn't work! I don't even want to talk about the phones..." Bobby paused, for a moment, and added, because you didn't get to be an old hunter without a wide streak of guile, "And when the oven shorts out, you won't have cookies anymore." 

Gabriel abruptly looked worried, even as Karen poked her head out of the kitchen. "Now, now, Bobby, you can't be rude to our guests. Would any of them like tea?"

At Gabriel's pointed glance, all of the four angels glanced helplessly at each other, and nodded slowly. One enterprising one even mumbled a short 'thanks', albeit being nervous enough that she said it in Hebrew. 

Karen, however, beamed at them and bustled back into the kitchen. Gabriel sighed. "Perhaps you have a point. I will have some sigils installed. They should correct the flow of energy. Then there should not be any further electrical problems. I will also pay for the damage. Satisfied?"

"Don't you people have a place in Heaven to hold court in?"

"We do. However, it does not have cookies," Gabriel said reasonably, as if that explained sodding everything. "I have already delegated several angels to take care of trivial matters."

"Now see here, you-" Bobby took in a deep breath, but Karen had already padded out of the kitchen, dusting her hands off on her apron, and her husband subsided sullenly when she pressed a kiss to his forehead. 

"The big house gets lonely sometimes," Karen smiled, "And don't you feel safer with all these gentlemen around?"

"No," Bobby scowled. "They scare the h... the bejeezus out of me." 

"Besides," Karen added placidly, "How many people out there can claim that angels talk to them?"

"Karen, when you talk to angels, that's praying. When angels talk to you, that's when people think you're crazy," Bobby glowered, setting his jaw even when Karen sighed, and then the phone rang. "Sorry. Hello? Rufus? Yeah. I've got a... what? The blood of pregnant women? Three pronged scar? I'll have to hit the books on that one... well, you have to wait-"

"That'll be a wight," Gabriel supplied, without looking up, through a mouthful of cookies. "You'll need sanctified iron. Cut off its head. It'll frequent someplace cold and dry." He nodded at one of the angels, who vanished. "Israfil will fetch it for your friend."

Bobby hesitated, and then Rufus abruptly yelped into the phone. "Er, yeah. Special courier. Just use that to cut off the monster's head. Likes to live in cold, dry places, apparently. Yeah. Angel DHL. F... well, sod you too, Rufus. Bye." Israfil reappeared next to Gabriel, looking as attentive as a f... sodding _puppy_ that had just done a new trick. 

"Okay," Bobby said gruffly as he put down the phone. "Maybe you can stay. For a few more days. If you fix the electricity. But we're going to have some house rules. Maximum of four minion angels at one time. No one breaks anything. And you can only be here between ten in the morning to four in the afternoon. And no talking in Enochian, I've had to replace the windows twice already." 

"Agreed."

postscript. rachel.

Humans were sentimental creatures. About a couple of weeks after the dust had settled in the Nevada Test Site, the Winchesters had somehow talked Castiel into stealing Ananchel's empty vessel from the morgue of a small town in Arizona, and then Castiel had talked her into attending the 'funeral' in the woods close to Bobby Singer's scrapyard. Because Karen had made some cake specially for the occasion, Gabriel had also attended, and Balthazar had tagged along, presumably out of sheer curiosity.

The empty vessel had been cremated, and all in all, Rachel and the other angels hadn't quite understood the point, not even Castiel, who was close to Dean Winchester, or Gabriel, who had lived on Earth for centuries. It was sort of like burning a snail shell, or a snake skin. Ananchel had been far more than the sum of her vessel's blood and bones. 

Afterwards, they'd buried the ashes, along with the ashes of Ananchel's wings that Castiel had been told to scrape up from the warehouse where she had fallen, in a little square plot of ground a short walk from the house, near the forest. When Sam Winchester had smiled nervously at Rachel and asked what she wanted written on the memorial stone, she had shrugged. There was nothing that could be said, not in Enochian, not in his mortal tongue. Angels did not quite understand loss as mortals did; grief, longing and regret tended to be human emotions.

In the end, and only because Gabriel had arched his eyebrows at her, she had carved a small sigil into the stone with the edge of her angel knife. It had been Ananchel's favourite, one of the few Enochian words for joy that were not linked intrinsically with service. In translation, it would have been serene-joy, contentment-peace. And then, vaguely relieved that the strange mortals' request had been completed, Rachel returned to Heaven to attend to her duties.

It was about a month later that she had been required to visit Bobby Singer's house, mainly to try and persuade Gabriel to return to Heaven to peruse a border overlap problem with two of the Boundaries, and out of whim she landed outside the house, at the plot of land. Rather to her surprise there was a small sapling, curling out of the earth, green and small and vulnerable, and she sat down before it, entranced, despite herself. This too, perhaps, was joy.

postscript. rufus.

Rufus had always thought of himself as pretty lucky. Old hunters usually were - that was how they got _old_ , after all, and not dead in their mid forties with a werewolf chomping on their hearts.

Bobby's boys, however - they brought having luck to a whole new dimension. If they didn't strike Rufus as being good kids deep down under all the occasional stupid, he might even have been envious. Take right now, for instance. They were hunting nagas in Louisiana, because the boys had been the closest by when Rufus had called Bobby asking for backup, and it turned out that the Winchester boys were, in fact, definitely running with an angel. Two angels. Who kept arguing with each other. 

"I don't see why you find this more interesting than Heaven," the one in the older looking 'vessel' with the British accent complained.

"Many things on earth are more interesting than Heaven. Ask Gabriel," the one who looked like a tax accountant retorted mildly.

"Seriously, you guys," Dean bitched, "We're trying to hunt here? Hello? Can we be professional?" 

Dean and Sam tended to take turns bitching like little girls. Sometimes Rufus wondered if it was karma. Maybe their parents had wanted daughters.

"There's nothing in this stinking, damp place," Balthazar growled, "Other than far more insects than God must have intended," which was naturally the point at which an alligator made a poor life decision by way of thinking that an angel was edible. 

"Hunting with you boys always makes life so much crazier," Rufus said dryly, standing on the bank with the Winchester boys and watching the fray. 

"You don't know half of it, old man," Dean muttered.

postscript. gabriel.

"I don't want it," Gabriel had said to Dean Winchester, after the shock had worn off and the clouds had cleared. "I'm not returning to Heaven."

"Well, you have to," Dean was one of those curious humans, who was never respectful, never afraid of things far more powerful than he was, especially whenever convinced that he was in the right. He fit his title to the letter, and it was far more annoying than it should be. "There's no one else."

"Lucifer didn't even kill a quarter of us today," Gabriel had retorted sulkily, balling his fists. "You have no idea-"

"Gabriel," Sam Winchester, on the other hand, probably liked to think of himself as the reasonable one, despite demon blood, the Lilith seal, and a whole host of other poor life decisions. "All of your brothers, they're going to need some guidance. They're going to need help. Maybe once they're on their feet, you can go away again. Right now, they're probably disorganised and afraid."

"Angels don't feel fear," Gabriel had muttered, which was a lie, but he was used to lies by now; he'd made himself a God of them once, centuries ago out of a whim; mortals had called him Loki Liesmith and had feared him. "And Lucifer is gone. Heaven isn't needed, now."

"If you really like Earth," Dean had added, "Then you might want to make sure that all those nuclear capable siblings of yours are going to behave."

"It's going to be a disaster," Gabriel had predicted, because even when he had commanded his own garrison, at the beginning, he'd always deferred large tactical decisions to Michael. It had been easier then. "I don't even want it."

"Usually the best people for a job like this are people who don't want it," Sam had told him, trying to sound cajoling. "Gabriel, other than Castiel, you're the only angel we know who actually _likes_ people. I think the world needs you up there."

"I could give it to Castiel." He had considered that for a moment, then he had shaken his head. Even if Castiel had been returned to Heaven, he was only one of the malakhim, and sadly, for creatures of celestial energy, angels tended to understand strength and hierarchy more than logic. There would have been civil war. 

Besides, he wasn't entirely certain if Castiel liked people, as in _people_ , or whether it was just that Castiel really, really liked Dean Winchester and thought that all the other humans could be along for the ride because they did things for Dean, like make pie. Angels tended to take obsession to levels unimaginable by humans, after all.

Eventually, he had sulked for a while more, while the Winchester brothers had bitched and nagged at him, and had given in. "Fine. I'll do it. For now."

He regretted his decision, in the days, in the months ahead; life had been far easier when he had lived just for himself. But there was more to existence than fun, more to existence than whim, and in a millennia after his own creation, Gabriel finally understood maturity. There was a sort of satisfaction in taking up responsibility, which was beyond the shallow pleasures of mere hedonism.

He would, however, never, ever tell the Winchester boys that they had been right. They'd never let him hear the end of it.

postscript. crowley.

Crowley became King of Hell, because it seemed like a good idea at a time. It didn't take him long to develop a closer, more nuanced understanding of his species - namely, that they were a bunch of two-faced, scheming, ungrateful, treacherous little bastards that would stab you in the eye rather than give you the time of day. 

Crowley grew thinner, and his hellhound Growly grew fatter, until one day he found himself nursing a glass of whisky in some sticky little London pub, seriously considering closing down the whole damn operation, preferably while the operatives were still trapped inside it, and that was when the bloody nuclear reactor had pulled a stool up next to him.

"Go on, smite me," Crowley told Gabriel, not even bothering to look at him. "Put me out of my misery."

"Why should I?" Gabriel smirked. "It's been very restful in Heaven, now that civil war has become trendy down below."

"It's so nice to know that I'm being useful to the bloody Boy Scouts." 

"It's not all fun and games being in charge of Heaven," Gabriel sighed. "Angels can be ungrateful, treacherous little bastards. And the worst part is, we're all technically family."

"Let me tell you about demons," Crowley grumbled, and then, because the world had clearly gone insane after the apocalypse, the King of Hell and the Prince of Heaven spent an hour or so bitching to each other about their subordinates over a bottle of very good scotch. 

It was surprisingly cathartic.

Even though Gabriel was probably here to kill him. 

"Incidentally," Gabriel added, as though it was an afterthought, "Should we accidentally learn Beezlebub's location on Earth - I hear he's been 'visiting' some old friends - some of us might accidentally crash his party. On pure coincidence."

Crowly raised an eyebrow. Beezlebub was one of the biggest thorns in his side; that ancient demon had been one of the first that Lucifer had created after Lilith, and he had certain old-fashioned ideas about hierarchies. "And why would you help me?"

"Help? Who said anything about help?" Gabriel could really work a wide-eyed look of innocence. "Some demons disappear, some particularly difficult angels get a bit of a work out, the world moves on." 

Much to Crowley's surprise, the offer didn't in fact have a dagger hidden behind it, and the shaky truce slowly became a regular arrangement. Crowley consolidated his hold on Hell - he grew fatter, Growly grew thinner. The world moved on, and perhaps sometimes even demons got happy endings.

postscript .balthazar

At some point Balthazar seemed to have been appointed the unofficial Chief Gabriel Finder, which was unfair, because the boss liked to shoot the messenger whenever he was in a bad mood, sometimes literally, and if Gabriel was hiding from everything, including Karen Singer's concoctions, that usually meant that he was in a very bad mood indeed. 

Besides, hunting for an archangel while holding a jar of strawberry preserve was, in Balthazar's opinion, an extremely undignified activity. He was older than the current oceans, after all. Older than some of the stars. And now he was sneaking through the Isle, because he had come to it often enough that he was attuned to its whispers, deeper and richer when the Isle knew that its master was home, heading for the apparent spot of nothing under the silver ash trees. 

When he got close enough, there was a grumble in Enochian, and Gabriel uncloaked himself. "You should not even know how to get in here."

"It was for the sake of security," Balthazar offered the jar glibly, and Gabriel snatched it from him. Gabriel had clearly grown very fond of his mortal vessel when he had been on Earth, wearing it all the time, even in Heaven, and his original garrison and some of the other angels had more or less promptly followed suit. Angels always tended to equate copying with flattery. 

"You stole some things from me." Gabriel scowled, though he opened the jar and dipped his fingers into the preserve, filthy thing. 

"I put them back. Also, if not for the things that I stole, you'd still be in Raphael's hands."

Balthazar regretted his words the moment he said them; Gabriel immediately sobered. Raphael and Michael - and even Lucifer - had been his brothers, after all. The ha-elyonim had once been close. 

Right. Straight to business, then. "Elijah wants-"

"I'm not holding any further counsel today," Gabriel declared, licking jam delicately off his fingers, and Balthazar blinked. His vessel had reacted to that, in a small press of warmth deep in his belly. Strange. He was sure that he wasn't hungry. "I've just had to sort a protracted and incredibly mundane dispute between Sophia and Raziel. You can all go and fucking hang yourselves."

Red preserve smeared over Gabriel's mouth, as Balthazar stared, and then the archangel began to smirk. "Balthazar."

"... boss?" Balthazar shook himself, internally. 

"Have you tried the mortals' version of sex?"

"No." Balthazar replied confidently. "I've never found it particularly interesting. Seems inefficient. Messy."

"Oh, my boy," A sly grin slowly spread over Gabriel's mouth. "Come over here. No, leave your wings where they are - we can play with them later."

"I will, if you'll see Elijah tomorrow. He's been an absolute pain about the requisition schedules, or whatever they are." And extremely persistent. Besides, Elijah was once Michael's treasurer, and it'd be nice to be owed a favour. A big, shiny favour.

"Sure, sure." Gabriel crooked his fingers. 

They used the _whole_ jar of preserve, for things that Karen Singer would have disapproved of. But at the end of it, sticky and filthy but sated, Balthazar had to admit that perhaps the humans had been on to something.

postscript. sam winchester.

The good thing about Castiel getting into a maybe sort of _thing_ with his brother was that Castiel was now around just about all the time. 

The bad thing about Castiel getting into a maybe sort of thing with his brother was that Castiel was now around _just about all the time_.

The angel's increased presence during hunts was the good part. Castiel's sudden, new and intense interest in whatever Sam was doing as of last week, however, was getting creepy, and Sam had no fucking idea why Dean had ever found it hot. Or something. 

"Cas, I'm trying to _read_ ," Sam finally burst out, after an hour of Castiel asking him far too many probing questions about the book that Sam was furtively trying to read before Dean came back from his foraging turn and ridiculed him. "Why didn't you go out with Dean?"

"Apparently I 'spook the locals'," Castiel looked distinctly unhappy about that, but well, small towns were small towns, sometimes, and Castiel still had a shaky understanding of appropriate physical contact. Some mental images from the earlier stages of the 'maybe sort of thing' had been seared into his retinas forever. "Also, your book is interesting."

"Uh. Thanks." Sam was fairly sure that George Martin rated a higher accolade than 'interesting', but then, this was the non-human lover of a guy who thought that higher literature had skimpily clad women gracing the cover. The skimpier, the better. 

"But your lives are so short. Why read and write about matters that do not exist?" Castiel asked, genuinely mystified, and by the time Dean returned to the motel room, Sam had surrendered his book and had scrawled a book recommendation list on the back of the motel invoice. 

Dean dropped the paper bags of takeout on the table. "Dude, did you just give Cas one of your nerd books?" 

"It's not a nerd book, Dean," Sam muttered, but this was an old argument between them, and he was already digging out his salad shake from the bag. 

"He's not reading it anyway, look at him." Dean hooked the spare chair over with his foot and sat down next to Castiel, who was flipping through the pages at an impossible speed, even when Dean casually splayed a hand on his thigh.

Usually, that was an invitation for the angel to start staring adoringly at Dean, but this time, Castiel merely continued to flip through the book. Sam had to hastily hide his grin behind his orange juice. Dean's expression was going to keep him warm at night.

Eventually, the angel read all the way to the end, and then he handed the book back to Sam. "Thank you, Sam." 

Dean was halfway through his burger, and he swallowed hastily. "You were _reading_?"

"I was. The story was intricate and unexpected. I did not think that Ned Stark would-"

"Hey, no spoilers. I haven't finished it." Sam cut in, and had to hide another grin when Dean glowered at him. 

"There are sequels," Castiel noted aloud, and disappeared. 

"What the _fuck_ ," Dean said, slowly and incredulously, "Did you just turn my angel into an actual nerd?"

"You were all for 'expanding his horizons' yesterday, Dean," Sam replied calmly, eating his salad. "These motels don't have thick walls, you know."

Dean scowled at him. "Is this revenge? Because this is _low_ , Sammy."

"He started it." Sam retorted. "You left him here. He used to just sit quietly in a corner and wait for you to come back. Now he asks me questions about _everything_."

Dean sucked in a breath, then something seemed to occur to him, and he grimaced. "Oh no. No way."

"What?"

"I might have once said, sarcastically, that you needed a friend," Dean admitted, and looked as though he had just bitten down on a lemon, when Sam began to laugh. Angels didn't understand sarcasm very well. "Fuck."

"Thanks, I guess," Sam said dryly. "Maybe I did." Outside of the small circle of hunters that he and Dean knew, they didn't have many other friends. And he certainly didn't know any who actually liked reading anything more than the journals of dead men regarding how to kill monsters, or had any interest in what he did if it didn't have to do with guns and back-up. It was... nice. Maybe.

"If he doesn't want to have sex tonight because he'd rather read about wizards, I'm salting your clothes with itching powder."

postscript. castiel.

An angel's memory is photo-perfect, and for this, Castiel gives daily thanks to a God who no longer listens. 

He remembered the first time he had seen Dean's wings. Their perfection would have been a surprise for any other angel, but not Castiel. Wings were a reflection of the angel as a whole, and they were never this perfect; even in Heaven, existence and Time would take their mark, fray pinions, pluck feathers. Dean had been in Hell, and he had been no innocent, but what he had done had been fated, what he was, was still holy, and what he would be would change the world. Castiel had been in love with Dean long before he had ever seen Dean's wings, but at that point he had first known selfishness. When he had asked Dean to hide his wings his request had not so much been driven by ingrained etiquette but by covetousness; he wanted to be the only angel who would ever see them. He had wondered if this was a chance to be the only angel who would show Dean their other uses. For this, too, he had thanked God.

He remembered their first kiss, grace to grace, the shock of it, the radial of gentle pleasure, the disappointment he had felt when he had realized that it had been an accident. The next had been better, more, and he recalled every moment of it, the way his vessel had fit against the hard lines of Dean's body, the way they had rubbed blindly together until their bodies had achieved a physical completion to accent the cerebral. It had been too much for Dean, the first time, and he had held the unconscious frame of his beloved, tucked Dean's head under his chin, and marvelled at his luck. For this, too, he had thanked God.

He remembered the first time he had taken Dean into his mouth, the weight and the taste of it, the stretch in his vessel's throat. There had been mistakes, at the start, but Dean had been patient, and there was no better joy for an angel than pleasing someone he loved, to be told how good he was, to feel Dean's thighs shake under his palms. Castiel had lived outside of flesh for millennia, and far from it being primitive, his first indoctrination to the sensation of pure physical ecstasy had been divine, when Dean had curled his fingers into Castiel's hair and bucked and cried out his name like a desperate prayer. For this, too, he had thanked God.

He remembered the first time Dean had kissed him, mouth to mouth, without the press of grace between them, the sweetness of it, the surprise. Castiel had never thought that it could be better than the touch of grace to grace, in its own way, a physical connection rather than a spiritual one. It seemed unbelievable at first, until he had belatedly recalled symbolism. Human actions tended to be laced with symbolism; a gesture in one culture could mean another, elsewhere, and for Dean, the simple press of lips had been far more than flesh on flesh - it had been trust, it had been tenderness, it had been affection beyond lust. For this, too, he had thanked God. 

He remembered the first time Dean had taken him to bed, after everything, the way he had hidden his nervousness under bravado. It had been fumbling, at first, and then Castiel had put his mouth on him, and then it was easier. Dean touched him with his face buried in the crook of Castiel's shoulder, eyes squeezed shut, hand in a fist around the vessel's primary external sexual organ, and afterwards, he had seemed disappointed. At first, Castiel had been concerned, then he had realized that Dean had been waiting for his grace to unfurl, like before, when they could meet grace to grace, and he had smiled, amused. Intimacy came in many forms, and this was already more than he had ever wanted. For this, too, he had thanked God.

The Righteous Man decides the ending, and the beginning, and because of this, Dean Winchester's life would never be simple, would never be easy. His lifetime will be one short blink in the span of Castiel's entire existence, but it will be spent with Castiel by his side, and for this too, Castiel will thank God.

postscript. dean winchester.

It was about a year or so after the apocalypse had been averted that Dean had finally stumbled on what made Castiel tick. Or actually, what made the part of Castiel that was older than humanity tick. On hindsight, he probably should have figured it out earlier - it had been so _obvious_. 

They were in a motel, in between hunts, and Sam had given him one of his bitchy eye-rolls when Dean had none-too-pointedly asked him to stay out late that night. This was usually a large enough clue for Castiel, and indeed once they were alone in the motel room, Castiel had pulled him close and kissed him, all eager, grasping fingers. Castiel was always like that, like he could never wait. Once Dean had laughed and told him that they had all the time in the world, and the angel had merely replied, soberly, that they did not. That _Dean_ did not. 

Dean had never thought of eternity as being lonely before. 

Dean liked undressing Castiel. The angel didn't seem to understand the eroticism in slowly unwrapping someone, peeling away the layers, but he endured it, allowed Dean to carefully tug out his tie, slide off his coats, unbutton his shirt, push him onto the bed and run his hands over the curve of his shoulders, the arch of his ribs, the lines of his flanks, the dip of his thighs. This form of worship Castiel understood, at least; the angel squirmed under his touch, hands twisting in the sheets, cock swelling between his legs. Dean didn't bother telling Castiel that he was beautiful, like he would if this had been a one night stand with some pretty girl from a bar. Castiel was more than Jimmy Novak's shell, more than flesh. The words would have been meaningless. 

The vessel was a good conduit, though, to the angel tangled within it, and Dean had so far had an entire year to figure out Castiel liked, and what Castiel _really_ liked. He pressed his tongue into Castiel's navel and kissed upwards, chuckled as Castiel whined and pushed his hips against Dean's still-clothed belly, moaned and tugged urgently at the sheets as Dean closed his mouth on a nipple and scraped his teeth over the tip.

Castiel let out a sound that could only be described as a breathless squeak, and Dean smirked and pressed his tongue over pebbling flesh, worked at it until it was a swollen red and Castiel was writhing, his breaths in tight gasps, and then the angel moaned as Dean merely licked over to the other nipple and did it all over again. 

"You liked that?" Dean asked - he always asked - when he kissed back up Castiel's jaw to parted lips .

Castiel tried to press forward for a kiss, but Dean tilted back, until the angel whimpered and frowned, focusing. "Yes, Dean."

Dean gave Castiel his kiss, licking deep into his mouth until fingers skittered over his shoulders, skirting his own hands down to Castiel's hips. "I want you to do something for me," he murmured, an inch away from parted lips, when he pulled back. "Can you do that?"

The angel shuddered, gorgeous blue eyes dilating. Angels liked service, Dean had found; they were, after all, manifests of functions. Orders were part of it all. He'd once thought that it was just a matter of power, and then he'd learned, afterwards, that it was something else altogether. Angels liked serving those they loved.

"Yes, Dean," Castiel whispered. "What do you need?" 

"I want you to try not to come until I say so, all right?"

This was usually one of the harder ones, and Castiel hesitated, until Dean added, as reassuringly as he could, "I'll help you."

"I won't come until you give me the word," Castiel agreed, then, and God but it was always _hot_ , hearing that. Dean smiled and kissed Castiel between the eyes.

"Good," he said, and a tremor of pleasure shook through Castiel's frame. In some ways, angels were really easy. "You're so good for me, Cas."

"I want to be," Castiel replied, simply, and Dean had to bite down on a groan as he pulled off his own clothes with jerky fingers. The angel watched him quietly, hungrily, until Dean had kicked off his shoes and boxers, then he reached for Dean's hardening cock.

"Not today," Dean batted Castiel's hand aside. He wouldn't last long enough to do what he wanted if Castiel got his hands, or worse, that mouth of his on Dean. Dean had experienced great blowjobs before, from girls who really, really liked sucking dick, but Castiel was something else. It wasn't just the lack of a gag reflex; it was the way Castiel kept moaning when Dean was pressed all the way down his throat, the way he kept trying to look up, as if to check if Dean was also enjoying it, the way he'd always end up humping the bed or Dean's leg or his own hand if he thought he could get away with it. God.

Dean had to squeeze the base of his cock and take in a deep breath just at the thought of it. When he'd calmed down a little, he took the small tub of lube from the nightstand, and Castiel smiled and spread his legs. If Dean let him, Castiel would probably try and take him dry, he was that impatient, but Dean wasn't really a fan of pain, and besides, the way Castiel always dug his heels into the bed and tried to push himself down on the two lubed fingers that Dean pressed into him? That was _hot_. 

"Look at you," Dean liked to talk while he worked, scissoring his fingers. "How are you this hungry, Cas? You had my dick this morning, in the shower, in your mouth and then up your ass, didn't you?"

Castiel squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, his voice hitching, probably taking a brief dive through memory lane. Apparently angels had picture-perfect memory, which was a fun thing to use in bed. Dean crooked his fingers, and Castiel yelped, bucking. "Oh!"

"Answer me, Cas." Dean began to thrust his fingers into the tight, clenching heat, three fingers now, ignoring the angel's prostate, and Castiel whimpered, squirming again.

"Yes. It was good, Dean." Castiel told him breathlessly. "You always make me feel so good."

"Keep talking," Dean instructed, tucking Castiel's ankles around his waist. "You're doing well."

"I want more," It had taken Castiel a long time to figure out appropriate pillow talk, and for that Dean blamed whatever the hell it was that Balthazar had suggested that the angel 'research'. The first time Castiel had said something straight out of a really bad porno, with words like 'spear' and 'impale' and 'raging shaft', Dean had laughed so much that he'd had to have a glass of water. "I want your cock inside me. Makes me... makes me feel good, Dean."

Dean had to take another breather at that point. Or two. When he had edged off the brink again, he kissed Castiel again, sloppy this time, marking time with the thrust of his fingers, the angel bucking eagerly under him, palms squeezing his shoulders, then a hand fit itself against the brand, and Castiel muffled a thick moan against his mouth. Without his borrowed grace, Dean no longer felt anything special when Castiel did that, but either the angel did, or Castiel had a marking kink. It was also usually a sign that Castiel was close. 

"Hey, Cas," Dean nipped at his lower lip. "Remember what I wanted you to do."

"I do, I do," Castiel whined when Dean pulled out his fingers. "Please. More."

"Yeah," Dean took in a breath, and then he sat up against the headboard. "C'mere, Cas." 

"My pace?" Castiel asked hopefully, as he scrambled up to straddle Dean's hips.

"No." The last time Castiel had ridden him on the angel's own pace, Dean had ended up bruised, the bedsprings had broken, and the metal headboard had fingerprints dented into it. It had been awesome, but reception had given them weird looks when they'd checked out. "Mine."

Castiel never took it slow if he could help it, sinking down greedily, his face slack with pleasure and his hands curled so tightly in the bar of the headboard that there were probably going to be dents again. Dean was always the one who'd have to keep his hands on Castiel's hips and keep count in his mind until Castiel relaxed around him. He set the rhythm, measured at first, ignoring how Castiel whined and squirmed and dug his feet into the sheets, then gave him more until the angel forgot speech, crying out as Dean began to pound into him, dragging the thick head of his cock over the gland within him with each thrust until he began to shake.

"Dean-" Castiel warned, biting down hard enough on his own lower lip that he had split the skin, "I-"

"Yeah, I see that," Dean's voice was broken to his ears as he forced Castiel down, made him sit on his lap and wait, and sucked in a tight, hitching breath when Castiel clenched around him. Fuck, but Castiel always felt so _good_ like this. "Don't move. We'll wait until you can take more."

"Oh. Oh." Realization dawned slowly, then Castiel let out a breath that was more like a sob, his cock leaking a slick smear over Dean's belly, and Dean ached from it, release a tight spring in his gut, but he waited until Castiel finally bowed his head and rocked tentatively against him. "I... I have control."

"You're doing good, Cas," Dean told him encouragingly, pulling him over for a kiss, "Very good."

The second time Dean brought them both off the edge, Castiel begged him. "Please... Dean, I need it, please, I need release, it hurts, _please_ ," and he nearly gave in. He didn't usually deny Castiel anything. But he kissed the angel instead until Castiel stopped talking and simply squirmed and trembled in his grasp. He took it slower, after that, but it wasn't long before even shallow thrusts were making Castiel's breathing hitch and his shoulders grow taut, and at the third time, Castiel was almost sobbing from it, all wrenching gasps, his voice stuttering as he promised Dean anything, everything, if Dean would only let him come, and Dean would probably have come right there and then if he hadn't dug all of his fingertips deep into his own palms. Fuck.

It was by the fourth time that Dean finally found what he was looking for, the both of them drenched in sweat and all but shaking in exhaustion. Castiel had merely looked at him when Dean had held him down, all simple, pure adoration and acceptance, like nothing mattered more to him now than Dean and he didn't give a fuck whether he got to come or not; Castiel always loved at an intensity that frightened Dean at the best of times, but now, broken down, cast together, it was perfect. 

"You can come," Dean told Castiel, and kissed him, slow and tender, and traced the sigil he had just learned over Castiel's chest with a forefinger. Enochian didn't have many words for love that weren't tied to God, Heaven, or service; this one was more of a question-promise of devotion rather than a statement, for the future, and he felt Castiel start against him as he recognised it, then shake, and then just as Dean thought that maybe he'd overdone it and barged into sap territory, Castiel reared back with a cry and clapped his palm over Dean's eyes.

The outward sweep of Castiel's grace as it surged outwards and wrapped tight around his soul was just as crazily fucking intense as Dean remembered, searing through every corner of his soul and locking his mind in an ecstatic spin of free fall. Passing out was always kind of a relief.

Castiel was curled against him when he came to, twitching and rubbing at his eyes. His throat felt raw, as though he'd screamed it broken. "Wow. I didn't expect that. Thank you, Rachel." 

"You asked Rachel to teach you Enochian?"

Dean might have had a very awkward conversation with Rachel which he would never admit to and which Rachel had taken all too seriously. He'd had no choice: he would rather have died than ask Balthazar or Gabriel, and he didn't know any other angels. His question to Rachel had been, namely, other than grace to grace, was there anything else that angels liked? And then Rachel had blown his mind with her answer. Lots. Of Answers. Apparently ancient creatures with eternity on their hands could be fucking kinky. He was never going to look at the other angels quite the same way again.

"Just a few basics. Enochian is more than just a language to you guys," Dean carefully shifted Castiel so that circulation could return to his arm. "It's more like code, isn't it? Instructions. You'll feel it all the way down, where nothing else can get to you."

"It is," Castiel said, almost shyly, and pushed himself up onto his elbows, "And this is my answer." He leaned over, to press their lips together, and traced the sigil for acceptance over Dean's heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Man, that was way longer than I thought it would be for a first serious attempt at SPN fiction. D: Hope you guys enjoyed it.


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